Fifth Life
by bergundy
Summary: In a rotting, polluted city, the privileged live in the Upper Levels and the not so fortunate in the Lower. She was never meant to spare him, and he was never meant to become a monster. SasuSaku, Snakes and Ladders Series
1. Set in Motion

**Notes: **Fifth Life of the Snakes and Ladders series. Major AU.

Story theme – _Corynorhinus_, Batman Begins OST

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

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_Subjects not of the Lower Levels must be immediately dispatched. _

- Regulations of the Lower Levels, Article 1

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She knew several very obvious indicators of someone from the Upper Levels, the first being that they wore clothing that exposed too much skin. One couldn't survive in chemical vapor for long without covering up – thin mesh around the neck and abdomen, layers of cheap seda along the arms, torso, and thighs, protective pants, high boots, gloves. A few seconds without a glove – sometimes she needed to check the casing on the barrel of her gun – wouldn't kill you, but over time, exposure to the toxic air would corrode the skin.

As for the face…well, they could only slather on the chemical screen and hope it would neutralize most of the toxicity. Some of it still hit the skin, of course…it was why you only needed to look around a roomful of people to see who went out the most; which of them were veterans.

She wasn't a veteran. She still had smooth skin. Her nails hadn't rotted off yet and were sawdust grey, brittle under the chipping, protective black polish. She also had only three kills to her name – two of them from the Mist crew and one from a gang so small that it had no recognizable ensign on the armband.

The second indicator of a person's origin was his or her face. People of the Upper Levels had elegant, cold, even features that bespoke of good breeding, clean air, and sunlight. Their skin had a healthy glow. Lower-Levels people protected their faces with screen, except when they were in a sealed complex, a crew-home. She had only cheap, reproduced pictures by which to judge physical beauty, but one thing she could stake her bio-shot on: none of the people in her crew looked conventionally beautiful. She knew her own face too well – bland, thickly slathered with screen, and pale – to believe it had any redeeming feature other than the green alertness of its eyes.

But _he _was beautiful.

Beautiful in a way that she could barely understand, like a picture come to life (once, Tsunade said, there had existed pictures that _moved_) and now in reach. She could touch it but not really feel it because of the fiber gloves. His skin looked like it had once held warmth – heat lost to the hostile atmosphere and sucked into the cold, cold particles. He had fine black hair, although she could already tell that it was an unruly sort of hair, sticking up in the back, a little like someone had run a volt through it. His eyes were closed. He wore a sleek black jacket and pants and boots with open cuffs. _Too much skin._ How long had he lain there?

She stood behind a corner, having been trained for long enough not to feel silly for hiding from an apparently prone body on the ground. This man – this _boy_ (he looked hardly older than her, or was that just because the golden air above kept his appearance younger than he was?) – was not of the Lower Levels. Was someone missing him? He must have lain there for a while. Since he had not been born in this ugly place, he must not have had the bio-shot which all Lower-Levels people had as babies, to protect them from the worst ambient poisons.

So he was probably dying now.

She crept closer, gun leveled at his torso. He didn't stir.

And then she lowered her gun and broke the rules that kept them all alive.

Her right hand pulled off her left glove. Her fingers touched his skin. Strange calluses on his palm, from wielding, maybe, unfamiliar weapons, nearly distracted her. She moved on, feeling higher on his wrist for a pulse. It throbbed faintly through the silken skin. Unwilling to release her gun, she hunted for the emergency syringes in her pouch one-handed. The boy continued to just lie there as she crouched by his head. The needle sank into his neck, guided by her expert fingers.

He was already in an out-of-the-way alley, and in any case, she couldn't take him back with her. So this was all she could do for him. He would probably _still _die in two more hours, and yet she propped him up against a cleaner wall. A rusting, exposed length of pipe threatened to crash onto both their heads, but at least it didn't drip. Having moved him, she eased off his jacket and wrapped him in it so that most of his bare skin was covered. If her naked fingers hesitated over his face, well – who cared? She'd never see him again.

_Live, _she thought then, and thought again that night as she returned to the Home. Outside, the toxic rain ran off the edge of the shallow dome in thin, broken sheets.

The next time she went on a reconnaissance mission, he was gone.

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Five, six, seven, eight.

"Watch out for that one," Kiba said as he reloaded. "Far right, behind Harper's Ninth."

"I see it," said Sakura. She didn't know this street like Kiba did – she patrolled the Sixth, most days – but the last one was an easy target. After the subject went down with a faint cry, Sakura and Kiba surged forward to loot, Hinata staying hidden to guard.

"Ten shots, a booster, and a spare round on this one," called Sakura. She turned the dead man's pouch inside-out but nothing else came out. Kiba whistled.

"I thought our crew was the strongest in this yard. If these guys are rich we might need to mark them…"

"I don't think so." Sakura moved on to another body as Kiba stripped off a decent coat from his. "They might have a new supplier. We should check –" She glanced at the armband – "Sand's supply lines or see if their territory shifted."

"And also if we can get some of this ammo!" Kiba studied a cartridge, turning it over in his hands before pocketing it. "Let's go."

They started down the road, trusting Hinata to follow. Sakura had to admire her – Hinata was soundless, invisible, perceptive; the perfect back-up but the worst person to play Second on any mission.

Tsunade received their report with displeasure. "You're not the first group to suspect the other crews of getting new suppliers." She sighed as she shuffled through the mess of notes and accounts on her large desk. "It's not just Sand. We're one of the few crews who haven't gotten new toys, and I'm sure we'll hear the offer soon."

"What's going on?" Kiba demanded. Sakura wished he'd been more polite; the woman who headed the Leaf had a quick temper on the best days. Luckily, Tsunade did not rise to the unintentional bait.

"Who do you think has the capital to supply all this to several crews?"

Kiba frowned.

"Cloud?" suggested Sakura. The crews to the north were uncharted, rumored to be powerful and wealthy.

"Rain?"

"Thunder?"

"No!" snapped Tsunade. "_Think._"

After a beat, Sakura guessed correctly: "The Upper Levels."

"Why?"

She opened her mouth and hesitated.

"When you throw a piece of meat to two starving rats in a cage, what happens?"

Kiba responded at once. "They fight each other to the death for it."

"That's right." The boss of the Leaf went around the desk and leaned against its front, crossing her strong arms. "Here, it's a little different, but the same basic concept applies. We get better weapons, but it's a foregone conclusion that we'll use it on each other before we even think of aiming at our suppliers. Doesn't it remind you of something?" When both Sakura and Kiba stared blankly, Tsunade slapped an impatient hand on the desk. "I keep forgetting. You youngsters weren't alive then. You only caught the tail-end of it and a shitload of rumors. Well, I'm telling you now. The question was never _why_, just _why now._ In the coming months we'll go off regular missions and I'll be sending more and more of you on reconnaissance. We have to find out when they first began to approach the crews with offers, or else we'll never know the answer. We _cannot – _"

Sakura winced as Tsunade struck the desk with her fist.

"– go into this as ignorant as we were in the first Extermination Wars."

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	2. Sasuke

**Notes: **Did I mention that this was a major AU?

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

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He had become what he had once feared.

This, he held deep inside himself, tucked away behind the black eyes that met his every morning in the mirror. Fugaku was not a man to whom one cried for help – he was a man whose respect was courted by the haughtiest stare, formal offers of alliance and truce. Fugaku was not a man who heard another's confessions with compassion or the desire to seek solutions – he was a man who studied that weakness and thought of ways to exploit it.

Fugaku was not a man who allowed his sons to think of him as _Father_ – he was a man who made them address him so, nonetheless.

"Father," said Sasuke, "you called?"

"Yes. Bring me Itachi."

He gritted his teeth. From second-son to messenger boy. Hardly a drop, by Fugaku's reckoning. Sasuke bowed and exited the unnaturally humid Conservatory. His feet tread over white marble, blue-grey carpet, and marble again. Down to the junction where the four curved paths met at a circular, metallic blue design on the ground. He turned into the path that veered right. Sunlight filtered in through arched walls of tinted glass, falling onto his right side in shades of cool blue and gold and replicating the delicate vein-traceries of the wall on his person. He felt nauseated; sickened. A casual glance at his forearms this morning showed that he had grown paler.

Mother was worried enough about his inexplicable pallor that Sasuke didn't need to waste energy on worrying about his skin. There were other, more pressing problems that he had to ask Itachi about (because somehow Itachi would know why and how to fix them; he'd always known and rarely told). Unfortunately, every time he tried to bring up the subject, his brother would brush him off with vague, effortless excuses. Well, he wasn't going to let Itachi do that today. He'd escort Itachi to Fugaku and _force_ him to listen, damn him to the lowest Level.

He placed his palm on the door, and it slid open. "Father wants to see you."

"Aa." Itachi sat on the carpeted floor, one leg pulled up for his elbow to lean on. He was reading something from the screen on the wall, which looked opaque to Sasuke at the doorway. "You can go now, Sasuke."

"I'm to bring you to Father."

Itachi's dismissive glance nearly made Sasuke discard his plan to talk, such was his instinctive dislike of that look of low-key contempt. "I assure you that I know the way. Go and do whatever it is that Father told you to do next."

"He didn't tell me to do anything else yet." The words hurt his jaw coming out.

Itachi made a brushing flick with his hand, blanking the large screen. He rose to his feet in a smooth, unhurried motion despite Sasuke's impatient tapping on the metal doorjamb. Itachi was the taller of the two of them; Sasuke's growth had slowed ever since – well, that was _another_thing Sasuke was going to grill Itachi on. "What do you have to hurry for, little brother?"

"Nothing," Sasuke bit out, annoyed by Itachi's musing – and twice as annoyed because he knew that was the intended effect.

The two brothers walked out into the muted sunlight, Sasuke clutching his fears to himself with both arms as they threatened to spill out in a babbling rush, Itachi…who _ever_ knew what was on his mind?

Sasuke was thinking about how to mention it, wracking his brains as Itachi padded along beside him. When they reached the junction of the circular mosaic, he gave up. "Itachi, what's wrong with me?"

They passed out of the strongest light onto the second path. "Eighteen years, and you ask me now."

Sasuke suppressed a snarl, which would be the excuse Itachi would take to ignore him. It hadn't used to be like this. Back when he had still idolized Fugaku in his mind as _Father_, Itachi had been kinder, less…absorbed in his own activities. "Since we visited the Lower Levels two years ago – "

"Don't talk about that in the open."

Sasuke pursued the subject anyway. "You came out fine." In fact, he could bet the invisible (but no less damning) blood on his hands that Itachi still went down to the reeking ground levels hundreds of stories below. "But I…"

"I told you to keep your mask on, but you had to go off on your own and remove it. You were lucky the rescue team found you in time."

"You took yours off, and nothing happened. You must have done something earlier, there's no way – "

"Or perhaps I have a gene," interrupted Itachi. A twitch of impatience entered his voice. "Maybe it's switched on in me, inactive in you."

"Then wouldn't there be a few more people with it?"

"I don't know."

"You know." His lifelong conviction in Itachi's dark, enigmatic wisdom sat in those two words. The forcefulness of his response caused his older brother to give him an appraising glance.

"I can speculate," he conceded. "Your body reacted to the chemicals to which you were exposed, so that you could go on living. That is all that I can conclusively tell you." Itachi palmed open Fugaku's door and stepped in. Sasuke remained in the corridor, miscellaneous thoughts bouncing against the walls of his skull.

He was mutated. He had done terrible things. And Itachi was wearing black nail polish.

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The urges had begun two years ago.

When he first woke up, he'd felt as though his body had been processed through a primitive meat grinder. His head had not yet begun to throb with the waves of seizing pain that plagued him later. _Then_, it had just seemed like a weight too heavy to lift off the pillow. Mother had fussed over him, embarrassing all the males of the family by placing a hand on his cheek in a tender caress. Over her shoulder, Sasuke had seen his father's look of plain disgust. It was in that moment, Sasuke realized later, that Fugaku had given up on his second son completely. It took Sasuke another year to give up on his father.

Sixteen years of struggling to meet the unreasonably high expectations of Fugaku and many fruitless attempts to escape Itachi's long shadow later, Sasuke decided that the first cause was hopeless, the second slightly better by an ever-slimming margin. That was the one that drove him out of bed months before the supervising nurses said he was no longer an invalid.

He'd drilled himself back into shape with a katana borrowed from Shisui, a close cousin and benignly amused friend of Itachi's. It wasn't the newest model of its kind, but the flaws in the weapon forced him to compensate with more precise control and fluidity. Fugaku never came to watch him in the old training room. He'd caught a shadow of Itachi through the opaque walls once, and far too many sights of Mother to count. He had started to ignore her.

Except that every time he finished training, Sasuke acquired an insatiable thirst. He would gulp down the water from the canteen that Mother brought, barely resisting the urge to pour it down his throat (because then half of it would soak into the front of his clothes; how ridiculous that would look, and all the precious liquid wasted). He couldn't explain it; he hid the worst of it from Mother by striding quickly away, never mind the hurt in her eyes, to the nearest water fountain where he'd drink until his back ached and his arms shook from holding him up in that awkward position. Then he'd tear himself from the fountain, still feeling so damn _thirsty._

And then, that night happened. A voice in the darkness woke him from sleep. His body was speaking to _him _by the dry rasp of his throat. Thirsty. Hungry. Restless. He threw back the covers and walked through the soundless door as it was still sliding open. His feet made no sound down the corridor, which was dim until it met the public crossway where phosphorescent strips outlined the way. He turned into the path on the left, heading for the Conservatory.

Some of the flora responded, startled, to his heat, a faint glow of light on the velvety petals. One of them opened – the most beautiful one, deep orange-red, with a gentle, sweetly rotting fragrance. Sasuke knew better than to answer its beckoning; the flower's allure was what made it so deadly to the stray insects who wandered in, having survived the filters in the vents of the walls only to perish in a vermillion maw.

A quick, sleek movement on the side nearest the paneled glass of the false window stole his attention. Topaz eyes watched him from the blue-tinted dark.

Shisui's cat knew him well. Sasuke was the boy who had sneaked it tasty treats, the only male who paused to give a nice, thorough scratch under the chin (that is, the only Uchiha the cat would allow near; it shunned the women, and all non-family members received outright hostility). Here, in the quiet Conservatory, the feline crept closer, one paw after another.

Sasuke forced his hands to remain immobile, watching and waiting with a stillness that belied his bottomless yearning. A soft, furry head tickled the skin on the back of his hands, which he had pressed flat against the cold marble surface. A moist, rough tongue lapped once at his skin.

Those hands turned and stroked the affectionate head, cradled it, held it …jerked it to the side with a sharp crack, bringing the broken neck to his mouth.

He had gnawed on it until the skin under the fur broke…

That night was the night he had nearly panicked and lost everything, the security of his well-esteemed family being only one of these things. But while his mind reeled in the glorious, rich meaty flavor that filled him and quenched his thirst at last, his hands gathered and cleaned all by themselves. They moved with cold, wise surety. In the morning he woke refreshed and whole. Content until the next day's training, when he inhaled the contents of the canteen but couldn't stop staring at the clean, bare lines of Mother's throat.

His new needs forced him to strange habits. Night was the only time that nobody crowded the halls. Few came to the privately-owned incinerator of the Uchiha; no one had reason to. Even Shisui hadn't thought to check it, although half an hour after the fact, it would have been too late, anyway. But Sasuke thought constantly disappearing pets would disturb too many people. There were rats and other vermin in the massive breeding cages, fat ones destined for experimentation. Then there were the wretched baby-creatures, wrinkled and soft and repulsively squishy. No one had touched those for a long time; that venue had proven fruitless in research. So Sasuke took one or two of them back to his large room. He hid them, draining the pathetic, fat little beings as slowly as he could bear. They were a heady sort of sustenance, though, ruining his appetite for the regular family meals even as he kept up the pretense of eating normal food.

Once or twice he'd come to his senses in the middle of a "feeding" session, startled and horribly conscious of the pleasured moans that had been scratching their way out from the back of his throat. He would have to do this silently, or not at all. He swore to himself that another sound and he would go back to water. His body, cowed by the threat, obeyed.

One baby died, then two. A third…and he began to fear for his secret. Fugaku had become testy and bothered. "What are the traps for?" Sasuke asked him once. A team of workers were securing new plating on the filtered vents. Fugaku snorted.

"Some of the Council think we've been infiltrated by vampires because there have been deaths among the lab animals. I say it's a simple infestation – rat-trial escapees, something like that. They just don't want to admit their incompetence. Just watch, now that I've had the filters updated, this'll end soon and it's all going to be hushed up. Bureaucrats." His derisive gaze slid to Sasuke. "What are you here for?"

"Nothing, Father."

Vampires? He knew all about those horrific mutations. They came from the Lower Levels – genetic disorders that, for the good of the clean ones, had to be purged from the Upper Levels. The people on the ground paid the price, but if it meant that at least a few could survive in this battered, ruined world…it was a fair bargain to the Council. Sasuke's family, the Uchiha, had certainly benefited from the policy.

Itachi, when he had cared to, had satisfied Sasuke's four-year-old curiosity with tales of vampiric atrocities. The bestiality of those mutations – which were all eventually euthanized and studied – were related in the barest, most factual way. (_But young boys have good memory for these things, and even greater imagination –) _Fugaku's hopes died hard, and the Council set in motion plans to eradicate the source of the trouble. Plans that Sasuke was old enough to hear, selfish enough to be relieved for, guilty enough about to flinch at the bloody wound on Shisui's arm as the older man returned from a mission. Fugaku and all the others took his reaction for unmanly squeamishness…not hunger.

He had become what he had once feared.

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	3. Rationalizations

**Notes: **Where the story will take a familiar turn before veering off in a wildly different direction again. By the way, this Sasuke, by virtue of the circumstances of his life, is bound to be somewhat different from the Sasuke of canon. I suppose I'm just warning you all that all the events that follow will affect him somewhat differently.

(An anticipated question: Why does Sakura always end up working with Neji in some capacity? – Because I adore the guy. But I also agree that he needs screen time, not girls thrown at him.)

**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

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"Nothing good can come of this."

If Ino had said it, Sakura would be tallying the pros and cons of the action in question; usually the pros won by a narrow margin. If Tsunade had said it, her word was law anyway. If _Lee _had said it, then the world was ending.

But it was Neji who spoke, the same Neji who was cousin to quiet Hinata and predicted the rains with stunning accuracy. When _he _said it, Sakura sensed in her very bones that nothing good _could _come of it. Yet Neji also took pride in a job well done, and so he had picked (at least, according to him) the best team possible for his assignment.

"_Sakura?_" Lee had exclaimed. "But she's too compassionate, too…kind."

Neji had fixed his unnerving stare – they all had pale eyes, something to do with a compound in the environment, but the Hyuuga cousins' had reacted more strongly than the average eyes and were almost pure white – on the other man. "That is what makes her a good secondary interrogator."

They had established a pattern with the outsiders they captured, a mean questioner versus a nice one. All interrogations took place in the maze of tunnels that comprised the Leaf's basement.

Ironically, (or so Sakura believed) the securest place for prisoners was also the safest place over all. The air down here was filtered the most thoroughly from the discarded – and repaired – vents that the crew had salvaged from old buildings. Clean and cool, the best air Sakura would ever breathe circulated in the tunnels. The greatest detriment to anyone's health, radioactive fallout, lay dormant and trapped five stories below the ground (although in some tunnels it was only three stories deep). Whatever horrors the subjects of interrogation faced, at least they would not need to fear suffering unintentional damage.

Sakura stroked the lank hair of the young prisoner now, with a bitter sort of kindness. "We have only one question for you. If you tell us what we need to know quickly, nothing else will happen to you."

"Promise?" was the dejected, childish whisper. This girl had been too young for missions; Shikamaru, Chouji, and Ino had ventured into Sand territory to capture her. She was the daughter of one of the minor captains.

Sakura only nodded. Neji moved forward, and the girl visibly swallowed. "When did your crew first receive offers from your new supplier?"

Her answer was certain, if reluctant. "They approached us a little less than half a year ago."

"Months?"

"Counting this one…um…maybe five?"

Sakura exchanged a look with Neji over the girl's head. _You see, she knows nothing. _As they had expected, although Shikamaru had been wise not to choose a more important target; every prisoner and excursion already drew the Leaf into deeper danger.

"Thank you," she said. The girl sagged in the chair. When Sakura started to follow Neji out of the cell, however, their prisoner rose from her seat and seized Sakura's arm.

"What's going to happen to me now?"

Sakura paused, struck by the sheer terror in the younger girl's eyes. "I must speak with the others." She took gentle hold of the girl's hand and removed it from her sleeve. The door closed behind her as she walked out, leaving the young prisoner in solitary confinement once more.

The single light strip was enough to guide both Neji and Sakura through the rest of the long corridor. They started down the hallway together. Neji was the first to break the silence.

"Ten months is the earliest that we've heard. The girl's either ignorant or Sand was one of the later ones. We still don't know how the Upper Levels would approach a crew without being shot on sight."

Part of Sakura's thoughts was still lagging behind with the prisoner. As a consequence, her response sounded rather vague and displaced. "Does that worry you the most?"

"What did you get out of the subject's answers?"

She roused herself as Neji trained a sharp stare on her. "It's nothing that we haven't known before. Either we risk taking a more prominent target, or we wait it out." The girl had been from a minor unit of the Sand, old enough to be informed, but without any truly valuable knowledge. Abducting anyone important enough to have met the Upper-Levels ambassador would probably merit a full-blown war with the Leaf's shadowy neighbor. "Our visitor's overdue, but looking at what we know, they're just approaching all the crews beginning from the northwestern sector. It makes sense."

"Give or take three weeks is my estimate," conceded Neji, "but I don't like the idea of an Upper nosing around our land, unmarked."

"But how do they travel undetected?" The path veered on a slow incline; beyond the locked double doors echoed voices from the cafeteria. "They _have _to wear the masks. No one is stupid enough to inoculate them."

She experienced a spasm of fear - an involuntary twitch - as she said that. Neji noticed._Stupid, stupid, stupid…you fool. It had to be with _Neji. Sixteen-year-old Sakura was a puzzle to the eighteen-year-old incarnation. If it were possible, she would have disowned the younger version.

Neji, fortunately, chose to continue the topic. "That's what I don't understand."

Would Tsunade accept the offer of better weaponry? Every other crew seemed to have. Not accepting meant losing out on firepower. Saying yes would be like borrowing a wolf's fangs to guard sheep…problematic when it entailed keeping the wolf around indefinitely.

(Wolves were bad and sheep were stupid – she'd read enough of the old, preserved fables to know this.)

"What's going to happen to the girl?"

"You already know. Why ask?"

Sakura hated to lie, but regardless of her personal opinions, her role required her to provide false reassurance to prisoners. The Leaf simply could not send the prisoners home. That would be double jeopardy – risking hunters from the enemy, giving the other crews descriptions of Leaf's home turf, and providing opportunities for them to analyze the drugs the Leaf used to loosen the prisoners' tongues. (Everyone had some variations of sodium pentothal – that was ancient formula, but no one knew how to mix them quite like Tsunade herself.) The subjects of interrogation could only be euthanized. Today, a young girl whose life was just beginning would die – and she hadn't even yielded anything of import.

Someday this wouldn't be necessary. _When we live in the buildings in the sky, high enough to not only see the sun but _feel _it. _That was Sakura's dream. When people wanted a laugh, Ino told them to ask Sakura. It became a good-natured joke that way.

Sakura parted ways with Neji for Tsunade's lessons, which, incidentally, were never a joke. From her, Sakura was learning how to combine compounds, analyze and take apart the drugs and medications that the Leaf used, some of which were exclusive to the crew. She had been singled out a couple of years ago for her aptitude and dedication. Sakura found the instructive classes exhausting, useful, and even fascinating at times.

They were also a form of penance for the raven-haired intruder she had tried to help two years ago.

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For fourteen nights a vicious debate had raged in the Council concerning whether or not the Upper Levels would descend in force on the Lower. Uchiha Fugaku had been all for it – the lower-city dwellers he viewed as vermin, doubly repulsive because they'd pretended to be harmless for so long but had now decided to create trouble for their superiors (namely, Fugaku and his ilk). Some time during the debates, the patriarch of the Uchiha House had lost his carefully controlled temper. His words had proven volatile enough to cause the Head of the second most powerful House to quit the Council. To Sasuke, the statement had been a non-sequitur – "Had you sincerely cared for any of your missing children you _would _have taken action before now. Your dissent is the excuse of a coward!" – for as far as he knew, there were no children missing from the Upper Levels.

Sasuke's incomprehension notwithstanding, the discussion had ground to a halt. And then one event sent it all tumbling irrevocably downhill.

Two weeks later, Sasuke was attending a mass-funeral.

This was a situation that he had often dreaded - one where he was singled out and incriminated immediately after _(although that wasn't the aspect of the situation that rendered it a nightmare. It was the thought that he would wake up without knowing he had become a murderer -)_. In a twisted turn of events, these were the circumstances that cleared his name of any charge, past or future.

He had yet to shed the numbed shock entirely. There was a part of him that had been cast out, adrift from "home" – whatever that had once meant. A dull ache tightened his chest if he thought about it, and made his breath catch whenever a stray glance at the opaque walls did not see Mother waiting with a canteen.

The first ones to report the carnage arrived after a shell-shocked Sasuke. As a group, they brushed past Fugaku's empty suite _(the man called Father, dead; the woman who had been Mother, dead) _to Itachi's room, the place of the successor, the trusted lieutenant. _The Head of the Uchiha is dead; long live the new Head of House._

(He almost thought that _he _had done it in his sleep, because Itachi had drained the bodies dry - )

The clean, sparse room and the few personal effects that remained showed that his brother had departed many hours ago.

On the screen in his room marched the words, _You know where to find me._

Itachi's slender weapon, the highly prized bladed rifle that Sasuke had secretly coveted, lay alone on the bedside pedestal. Sasuke, looking down at the sleek, well-polished metal, wondered why his brother had left it; wondered how he could ever have wanted the thing. Murders had been committed with it, with effortless ease. Did the world turn like this? – a weapon for a family, skill in place of love, never-ending thirst instead of dying outright?

The old plans drafted by conservative, overcautious Council members were scrapped. Itachi, the vampire and the murderer of all his clan (except for Sasuke, who had left his room to…fight his unfortunate insomnia in the training room), had joined the pestilence on the ground. It was time for the Upper Levels to step in and enforce an over-lax discipline. The people of the Lower Levels had to be made to respect the divide between their worlds, and Itachi had to be executed before he betrayed the secrets of Upper technology and longevity.

Of course, there were a few who rationalized that Itachi might have been a murderous psychopath, but no conclusive evidence showed that he had been behind the vampire problem all along, even if that made a neater package. Nobody, however, entertained the idea that the last tragic survivor of the Uchiha massacre was withholding information. It was intensely profane to even think of it in the quiet, obscure corners of one's mind.

As for Sasuke…he'd always felt that Itachi's message was not so much a challenge to the Council, as it was a derisive invitation addressed personally to his younger brother.

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	4. Strangers

**Notes**: Something everyone should listen to: _Myotis _from the Batman Begins OST. I frequently find myself obsessed with Hans Zimmer's work, and his collaborations are always amazing. By the way, I am no good with action scenes, but to help give a visual I'll just say that "my" characters would fight like people who know parkour.

_Ishin, _like the Ishin Shishi (see Rurouni Kenshin for the meaning).

**Disclaimer: **51 percent of the shares. Oh yeah. (…Not.)

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Four days later, in complete ignorance of the turmoil unfolding in the world above, Sakura released a happy, untrammeled sigh. The evidence was in the heavenly, incredible scents in the air: Chouji was directing the kitchen staff today. A compelling reason for her legs to hurry her into the cafeteria, if there ever was one.

The cafeteria was the largest indoor space in the Leaf; there was no other place for so many to congregate for meals. After the set times, the servers emerged and pulled down the steel-plated covers on the walls to protect the kitchen area. The same room would then serve as a training or exercise hall. Once in a while, Tsunade would even have them practice safety drills in case of attack.

A shallow convex dome lit with hundreds of pale strips (which stole the light of the electric lines and allowed the Leaf to conserve energy) topped the cafeteria. The dome had been hit once in an old war, and so metal reinforcements had been added since that time. In the past, Sakura, Ino, and a group of adventurous, similarly-aged youths had dared each other to climb up the long ladder, dash across the steel bars, and slide down the vertical metal pole on the other side. The bars were actually quite wide; whole pipes that brought in filtered, pressurized air were protected inside the network of reinforcements. When it had been her turn to run, Sakura had struggled across at the shuffling pace of the sickly aged (or imminently dying), encouraged only by Ino's cajoling. Neji and Kiba had given the most impressive performances: Kiba because he almost slipped off in his boyish haste, but got back on without once asking for help; Neji for taking a flying vault from the middle of the ladder, catching one of the free-swinging cables, and landing with quiet grace on the bar.

Now the next generation of children and daredevils tried it during exercise hour, shamelessly happy for the impact-absorbing mats that were spread across the floor. Sakura's year no longer bothered. It was kid's stuff.

She went to her usual seat at the usual table, a little to the right of center. The long tables accommodated more than a hundred sitters, but her longtime friends and mission partners had claimed this end for as long as she could remember. The stew in her bowl – some combination of protein and carbohydrate – looked lumpy and rusty brown, but the scent (and her own experience) betrayed the excellent meal that it was.

Ino plunked down into the seat next to hers. "Whoa, you have double servings? Careful you don't gain weight, Sakura."

"I'm not worried." Working under Tsunade was a stressful, slimming experience. Having dulled the edge of her hunger with several mouthfuls, Sakura could now appreciate the heightened noise level in the cafeteria. "Besides, I have a mission soon after this. I'll need the calories to burn."

Ino gave a sage nod, casting a glance over at the guards who stood at regular intervals along the walls. "Right, with Kiba and Hinata again."

"They're a good team for me," she said, "even though…" She stopped herself, disinclined to follow a thread that had meandered towards Shino's death and Kiba's resulting ruthlessness on the field. Hinata had also wrapped herself in even thicker silence, communicating with her living teammate without needing much verbal exchange. "They're a good team," finished Sakura.

Sakura was the third wheel. She could work with everyone, but had never truly fitted into any team. She had always been bounced around until Kiba and Hinata's team opened. They accepted her on respect alone, but the warmth was lacking. It had to be said, however, that they were the best team she had worked with in a long while.

"I know what you mean. Damn, if it isn't noisy in here." Ino shoved her spoon into her mouth. When she spoke, the handle flipped up and down. "Oh, right. Forgot to tell you." She removed the spoon (now clean of all traces of stew). "Neji's team walked into big trouble in sector eight this morning, while you were working with Tsunade. A wanderer came along and saved their butts from Mist snipers. Neji's still sore about it; he hates the man. But Shizune checked the guy over, found nothing on him or in him. He's got the shot in his blood, even if he does look weird-ass pretty, if I say so myself. Sitting over there now, see?" She pointed.

Sakura's mildly interested gaze found the back of the stranger's head. Long black hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. He seemed to exert a magnetic force on people, because they crowded near him. Newcomers flocking towards his table obscured her view.

Curiosity – an urge to see if he really was as _pretty _as dear old, finicky Ino claimed – drove her to her feet. Her friend gave her an amused look. "What are you doing?" drawled Ino.

"I'm going to rescue him." She hoped her firm, no-nonsense tone passed muster. "By inviting him to our table." Kiba was on duty along this stretch of the cafeteria, not Neji, so she wouldn't be provoking anyone. In any case, she had to see for herself what flaws had prevented this wanderer from being recruited long ago, if he was so great as to rescue Neji's team.

Then again, most people shot on sight in the Lower Levels.

The modest cluster of people didn't part willingly for her, but half of them recognized her as Tsunade's protégé and shifted enough for Sakura to reach the man.

He half-turned his head as she tapped his shoulder. The shock of recognition on her face gave him just enough warning to dodge under Sakura's punch.

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She took a second swing – feigned, so that she could jab upwards with her knee. The man moved faster than she did; he cleared his seat before her foot, as though he had known beforehand what she planned to do. Her kick was blocked, and the momentum of her charge was redirected over the table. Plates and bowls crashed around her. Stew – lukewarm and thick - slapped across her back. People screamed. Twisting in mid-air, she landed on feet set wide apart, a steadying hand on the table's edge. She advanced again, stepping over the table and clearing the second one by landing on her hands and pushing off into another leap.

The man eluded her with frustrating ease. He retraced the path he'd cut across the cafeteria, doubling back as she flinched away from a blow from his fist. If she had not ducked and jumped forward to the next table before turning, he would have taken her down from behind.

Fighting him was not like sparring with anyone she knew. She ran on pure adrenaline, forced time and again to make awkward changes in direction, most of them nearly in mid-jump. Like a good combatant, he switched to the offensive without warning. Avoiding his kicks and counterattacks on sheer reflex, Sakura took advantage of his role as the pursuer to lure him near where she'd last spotted Kiba. Never mind the hysterical audience, the shouting; too fast for thought, she raised her arms to block a blow that forced her to drop to the ground among the scattered dining ware.

A quick glance to the left. She'd gone in the wrong direction – now they were near the ladder. A shadow swooped over her and she crouched. He went to the ladder, ascending as if he had no need for steps to the high bars that crisscrossed the inside of the dome. She slid a foot back and then ran forwards with a flying leap. Her hands never touched the ladder as she skipped several rungs, kicking off with her foot. She threw herself into the air. Her fingers closed over the old dangling cable, useless except for one purpose.

Even Kiba couldn't shoot at the man now, and Tenten was regrettably out on mission. A mis-hit might, by unhappy chance, blow up a pipe. Sakura struggled onto the bar, having miscalculated. Her opponent lashed out; his arm was longer than she'd estimated and caught her in the side. While she strove for balance, he flipped over the side, one hand on the bar.

_Don't look down._

She jumped, angling her leap so that she broke her fall by catching his ankle. At once, he tried to kick her off with his other foot. He was wearing tightly secured, practical boots, however, and she pulled herself higher by that. Sakura had effectively made herself a dead weight that dragged on his arms (and ironically, now any weight gain worked to her advantage), unabashedly levering herself higher by hooking her hand into the waistband of his pants and the belts that ran over it. The man didn't even grunt in exertion as she pulled herself over his back with another hand on this shoulder.

Now that her mouth was right next to his ear, she realized from the man's even, regular breathing that he wasn't even close to panicking. Perhaps he had even meant for this, intending to speak to her away from unwelcome ears. Although she was the one who held her opponent in a headlock, he was the one who controlled the situation.

"If you cut off the air to my lungs, I will let go and we will both die." They both knew that her arms could not reach as high as his. "Why are you throwing away your life?"

His voice was low and deep, having a hypnotic, almost dulcet quality. So this was how the voice of one who lived in sunlight sounded. "It's worth my life to kill you." After _his, _her voice was all spikes and harsh roughness, the words slurred behind a shakiness borne of exertion. The man was not even breathing hard. "I should have killed you long ago." His hair ticked the side of her face as she tightened the lock, hanging all her weight from it as she hunted for the thin knife she kept on her person. The hair was the wrong texture, too silky. It submitted to be tied in a ponytail. But people changed, as did their appearances. Only she could recognize his even, well-bred features anywhere.

"I'm not the one you saved."

Her entire body stiffened. He felt it through the tensing of her arm. "I should still kill you. Come to offer us what you offered Mist, Rock, and Sand?"

"No."

Her free hand found the slim handle of the blade. "Nice try."

"If you kill me" and he seemed amused by her predicament – "you may survive by a slim chance. And then you will have to explain why you thought you recognized me…while if we agree to live, I may even answer your questions."

"You assume that I have any."

"Sakura – "

How did he _know? _The others must have shouted at her, and he must have heard.

"Everyone who lives in the Lower Levels has questions about the sky."

She relaxed her arm and he pulled both of them up in one, fluid motion. Once on the bar, she skipped away from him, but even the short distance proved an inadequate screen for his presence. She was more aware of this man than she had ever been of anyone else, barring Tsunade – and the feeling was completely different. How had he survived here? The possibilities ran through her head: he must have hidden the healthy glow of his skin under repeated cosmetics or a bland chemical screen. Contacts were easy to procure; she doubted that his eyes really were pale gold. A simple test with nail polish remover would have proven the lie. Why had no one done these things?

Because Shizune had tested his blood for the lingering protection of the bio-shot. That any Lower Levels person had yielded their last safeguard – fragile as it was – to invasion and infiltration by the Upper Levels was deemed ridiculous.

"If you're not him," she hissed, "then how?" _How do you have it do they all have it have I doomed not only my crew but all crews and why the beginning of the Second Extermination Wars – _

"Let's talk later." The man's eyes narrowed and his mouth curved in a faintly patronizing smile. "Now is not a good time."

"Who are you? _Why_ are you here? What do you want?"

"You can call me Ishin." He turned his back to her and began to walk down the steel bar toward the vertical pole. "I am not here to represent the Upper Levels in any manner."

"So why did they let you come here?"

He slid down the pole with the ease of one who has done this throughout his childhood. Sakura followed immediately after, determined to have the answer to one question, at least.

"Tell me."

She could see Tsunade striding towards them, looking absolutely furious; judging by the crackling electricity in her glare, more items were in danger of being broken in the near future. The steel plate covers were already coming down to protect the kitchen.

Ishin's glance seemed to see right through Sakura's false composure. "Whoever said that they gave me leave?"

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Sasuke's squad dropped onto the ground in the northern quarter of the city. There was a wide border of no-man's land between the gang which titled itself as Rock and the powerful Thunder gang nearer the east. Both gangs – street groups grown large and clannish over the years as a survival mechanism – had bought into the obsolete Upper Levels technology that had been offered. Neither knew what the Upper Levels planned.

The mask over Sasuke's face constricted him. Not in the literal sense, because it made breathing possible, but while plenty of those who went on expeditions to the Lower Levels – strikers, as they were called out of an old, esoteric joke – said that one got used to it, Sasuke thought he would never learn to ignore the stretched, closed sensation on his face. It felt like a hand clamped over the mouth and part of the nose, pulling from ear to ear. The protective salve on the upper half of the strikers' faces would hold out against the atmosphere for only eight hours. Perhaps better medicines and equipment could have been made for these sojourns, but these had sufficed for so long. One council member – Fugaku – had explained in a famous public speech that capital would be wasted on developing adaptations for people to venture to the Lower Levels. There was no need. Who would want to go more often than they already did?

Apparently Itachi had.

Now and then, on one or two missions, a certain striker would look askance at Sasuke, pity and disappointment warring in his or her eyes. "What?" Sasuke would snap at last, and despite everything, the striker usually replied:

"Your brother came here before."

"He took some samples from the air. I guess he found a way to acclimate himself slowly."

"He was…he could walk here without a mask. We should have asked him for the method before he…"

"_Left?_" Their faintly admiring reminiscences would end at Sasuke's icy completion of their speculations. Itachi had been brilliant, no doubt, but he had also been cruel and calculating and self-serving, and couldn't anyone see that Sasuke wanted to be n_othing_ like his brother? He used Shisui's modified katana, not Itachi's cursed rifle. He'd carry the extra weight of a separate gun before he'd use the weapon that had been used to slaughter his family.

_Itachi_ had been the one to play ambassador, he realized. The obscurity of the polluted air, the shadows and deceptive quiet of the dusky, perpetually glum streets all seemed like traits that would have made the environment appeal to him. And so Itachi had assimilated his exterior with that of the Lower-Levels survivors – the nail polish and concealing clothing would have hidden his healthy skin and nails – and perhaps that had warped the interior as well. But nothing ever rotted from the outside in.

Sasuke strode a bit further away from his companions, and found that his instincts had been correct. He fired, and the person who had been trailing him after he split off from the squad hissed. The silenced shot sailed past her dark head, but that was intentional. "Come out," he said softly, unconsciously imitating calmness than he had grown up near and never been able to penetrate.

The girl stepped out from behind the corner. Her jaw dropped as she stared at Sasuke, an intruder from the upper world. Sasuke, for his part, was unimpressed. The girl had an armband that marker her as belonging to a particular gang, but the insignia was not one of the five that Sasuke had been taught to recognize. He'd also seen more aesthetically-pleasing girls before, not that _they_ had interested him very much outside of the purely basic urges of his body. Those had dimmed, too, with the arrival of his bizarre new needs.

(It had started two years ago. They weren't _new_ by any stretch, anymore.)

"You…you have dark eyes." The girl stared in wonderment.

"Don't move."

His clipped tone did not change the intensity of her observation of him. He had been scrutinized by the opposite gender before, but to be watched hungrily by a Lower-Levels dweller added a new element to the already unpleasant feeling. Her face softened with a longing adoration that repulsed him.

The girl's pulse pounded strongly below her skin. Sasuke almost tasted it, the coppery rich liquid coursing through the veins like a warm elixir. He hadn't fed in five hours. He was hungry. The rhythm of her blood resonated at his temples. Her eyes finally saw where his rested, and widened.

The pounding stopped.

Sasuke actually frowned in dismay – where had that golden musical thrumming gone? – as his hands prepared to squeeze the trigger.

"Wait," protested the girl, looking more fearful since his automatic raising of the weapon. "Why are you still with them? You're one of us."

Sasuke prepared to fire. She talked faster.

"Look, you have the eyes when you think about it; I'd know the shift anywhere. Like fire slithering behind the irises. Mine don't change so much like yours but it's easy to see what you are when you're most hungry. We can hide our heartbeats, too, it's why the crews can't reliably track us. Please don't. You're _one of us. _You should come with _us_; I'll help you. I don't care if you're from the Upper Levels. I'll teach you."

The necessary question fell out of his reluctant mouth and burned the still air. "What do you call yourself?"

Without any circumlocution, the girl answered. "I am a vampire. And so are you," she added. "By the way, my name is Karin. Nice to meet you…?"

He lowered the gun, knowing that in doing so he was making more than just the decision to refrain from killing her. "Sasuke."

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_Tired and hungry. Catch food, no?_

No, he thought, not yet.

The beast stood up, shook itself down with a dissatisfied growl, and settled down again for a long wait. He had been traveling for days. People had tracked him from the Happy Factory (that was how the chipped logo on the wall had looked to him – a primitive smiling face) to the place of the People Who Smell Electric. They lived in a washed-out, burned-out area that had probably once had a lot of machinery and manufacturing equipment. He could see the electric lights, sometimes, and he smelled them around those people like a searing sheet pulled over them.

They had tried to kill him, and in return he had thought it best to pick off a few of them, no harm done, and then move on. It wasn't a grudge or anything. People were always trying to kill him, and he had always been on the run. Alone. Well, he had the beast, but he didn't want him and neither did the beast care for him; it was only there for itself. And yet it was a part of him, so was he really caring for more than himself, or did the beast exist, or did _he_ exist? He wasn't sure.

He had learned how other people talked (_other_, because he was a person too, right?) and tried to join a group once, but none of them had wanted to do anything other than kill him. Once, there had been one person, a man who felt like heat. Not the first time he had noticed People Who Held Warmth. They came from somewhere not-here, and they usually wore extra coverings on their face and had auras that did not mean well, and powerful weapons with a shine to them. But that man had had an intriguing quality about him, not-hostile, studying _him _as _he _studied the man. That man didn't wear a mask but carried the same latent warmth.

He might have _trusted _that man, but then he'd gotten shot. He woke up later on the road that led down to Happy Factory, which was not good. The man's trail was old then and the air smelled like it would rain soon.

Naruto had seen all there was to see in the north. It was time to head south.

_Hungry_, said the beast, a fire-golden thing in his mind. Naruto shoved it to a dusty corner and went on his way.

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	5. Concessions

**Notes**: The plot is slowly coming along….slowly… If Ishin annoys you, please remember who he is and that he is meant to be that annoying.

Warning: run-on fragments, stream-of-consciousness, and incomprehensible English.

**Disclaimer: **Nope.

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Tsunade had assigned the two of them clean-up duty after the last meal of each day for a month. On one hand, Sakura knew it was a chance to speak with the man who called himself Ishin without witnesses: clean-up duty wasn't the most exciting thing to watch after all, and nobody liked to loiter when sleep was the most pressing order of business. Tsunade probably thought that Sakura would work out some kind of rapport or cessation of hostilities with the new recruit to the Leaf.

Crew policy went something like this: if something's useful and clean, use it. Ishin had landed himself in that category. No one, in fact, had a concrete reason to distrust him except Sakura. The other hand of the issue, then, was that she alone knew what he really was. Neji got bad vibes from him but the Hyuuga was too disciplined to act on what appeared to be irrational impulses. If she could, Sakura would have told him to trust his instincts.

Ishin was in charge of wiping down the messy tables – people could be such pigs, sometimes – while Sakura mopped the floors. She'd volunteered to do that so as to get a longer-reaching weapon than her arms. Ishin looked so at ease when he worked that the temptation to slosh sudsy water on him gave Sakura's wrist an uncontrollable twitch. When she had cleaned her way across the cafeteria to the man, Sakura paused, one hand holding the mop upright. Ishin straightened unhurriedly. The space between tables, however, was too narrow to allow for much combat maneuverability.

"What about the Lower Levels interests you?" Sakura asked abruptly.

Ishin folded the stained cloth in his hands and placed it on the table behind him before crossing his arms. "Everything."

Her forehead wrinkled. "What, the air? The stink? The runoff from the rains?"

He nodded. Although he watched her politely, Sakura got the feeling that she was being patronized in some way.

"But _why?_"

The electric lights went out, as they always did at the same hour every night. The light strips glowed with the luminescence they had absorbed. "The people who live in the Lower Levels have greater potential than those who live above."

A curt laugh escaped Sakura's lips. "If so, we should have reached it by now. Do you think we'd live here by choice?"

"It's true that the Upper Levels have better facilities. But they've grown complacent." He uncrossed his arms. "Your inter-crew wars are destructive, but competition can also drive improvement. The Council that pretends to enforce peace in the levels above only obstruct progress."

Did this man want to live in war so badly? "Why are they trying to kill us now – or get us to kill each other?"

"You failed to kill someone from the Upper Levels." Ishin's steady gaze made Sakura's stomach flip over in a kind of warning that she couldn't recall her body ever giving before. "You wanted to help, impulsively, and instead you set a vampire loose on the Upper Levels."

So she _had _caused it all with that thoughtless act. When Tsunade finally questioned Sakura for her reasons, all she'd be able to say would be _He was as pretty as a picture. _There were reasons for the Rules, and she'd broken the most important one of all. "How would they know that a Lower-Levels person was responsible?"

"All vampires are mutations caused by the lower air."

"But it doesn't mean they're people _of _the Lower Levels." Ishin's simple, inaccurate explanation drove Sakura to elaborate. "There are gangs so weak and small that their people don't get the bio-shot in time, but most Lower-Levels people can _never _become vampires because they _do _get inoculated. It's the Upper-Levels dwellers that run the greatest risk of acquiring the disorder."

"You should have killed my brother, then."

"Yes, I _should've!" _Her jaw clamped shut. Ishin's own _brother?_

"He was being foolish and took off his mask," he said dismissively.

"How did you get a bio-shot? You can't derive it from blood that quickly. It would take years."

"First of all, your bio-shot is not as infallible as you believe: it only suppresses the effects of the disorder, without immunizing the recipient. Secondly, it would take the Upper Levels a much shorter time to analyze its composition." At Sakura's skeptical look, Ishin conceded, "Although more than two years."

"It's something that took _generations _to develop!"

"Certainly. But I had also been experimenting with the lower air using better equipment, long before you rescued my hapless brother."

"And now you can breathe without a mask," said Sakura.

"That is correct."

They were neglecting their work, but she couldn't _not _pursue the subject now. "Why aren't more of them doing – what ever lets you do that?" A stab of fear lanced through her. "Or are there more like you, already? Did they all find out from your brother…?"

"No. They don't think it's necessary. I was the only go-between they needed. My brother's blood set me on the right track to complete what I had begun years earlier."

"When you left, then…" She shoved a few stray bangs from her face, a gesture to relieve nervous energy. "Where did all your research go?"

"I destroyed it after memorizing the formula."

Sakura nearly dropped the mop in disbelief. "That formula is nearly twelve pages long!"

"Do you consider basic memorization skills beyond me?" Ishin's dry tone snapped her to her senses.

"No, but…" Her narrow-eyed glare didn't faze him in the least. "I won't hesitate to kill you, Tsunade or not, if you put the Leaf in danger."

"I don't have to do that," he said softly. "You already did."

Sakura smashed the tattered mop head onto the floor and started cleaning vigorously. "Why did you tell me these things?" She snapped, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

"Because you are a catalyst. You can change the status quo."

Sakura's head whipped around. Ishin met her gaze with calm seriousness. "You _mean _that?" They were only two people who were stuck with cleaning an enormous cafeteria. She was _mopping, _and he thought she could change the world? What kind of line –

Except from Ishin it wasn't a _line_, and was as far from flattery as one could get without being insulting. He believed it. And to believe it…the mere concept was dizzying, intoxicating.

"Unless you are willing to let events run their natural course," Ishin said, impatient at last.

Things that ran their natural course ran in one inevitable direction: down. But that was the world, wasn't it? The Leaf was fighting just to survive. No one in history had ever pursued a selfish interest without bringing repercussions for everyone else. Inquisitiveness did _not _bring rewards.

"How many vampires have you met?" asked Sakura.

When the month of penance ended, she was almost sorry.

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His first thought was that he was dreaming. He had fallen to a place where all the sounds around him echoed so much that he couldn't understand what was being said. Circulation to his hands had died, and he couldn't see even himself in the vague darkness. He smelled burnt plastic and corroded fabric and knew that he would wake up in the past.

He was right, of course. He woke up in that part of his memory where he was lying in a sterile, soft hospital bed, stretched out on his back, vulnerable to all kinds of attack. The shafts of sunlight struck into his eyes with debilitating precision. The stiff, paralyzed sensation pressing onto his body, pain and anesthesia all muddled up so that when the nurse supervising his condition tried to give him something to dull the ache, the drug only made it worse.

Given the defining characteristics of this dream, Sasuke thought that it might qualify as a nightmare. He cracked open his eyes to blinding light.

The blaze, however, came not from sunlight but the white, cold glare of an electric lamp. He lay prone on a hard, unyielding surface that felt like metal. And while his body felt paralyzed, his cranium and his upper left arm ached the most. He shut his eyes again.

"Sir…" A mellow, ambiguous voice – "It's done."

"Good." The other was older, raspier. Sasuke didn't like either of them: the first for its insincerity, the second for its smug assuredness. And finally, because they sounded responsible for the sorry state that his body was in.

"Kabuto," said Smug-voice, "have Tayuya take him to his cell. He's waking."

Mellow-voice answered, "Of course, sir. Although, wouldn't it be easier to send Karin? She is listening right outside the door, after all."

Smug-voice's laugh was even worse than his speech. "I wanted to see how fast she could run when we opened it. Pity."

"She does have an unhealthy interest in the young man. Young girls her age often do."

"Which is why Tayuya, who does not, will escort him," said Smug-voice with a curter edge. "Do not presume to question me."

"Apologies, sir." The mellow voice became subservient. "I'll ring up Tayuya."

A silent moment passed.

Mellow-voice murmured in solicitous tones, right beside his ear: "How are you feeling, Sasuke?"

Setting his palms on the smooth, metallic surface, Sasuke pushed himself up into a sitting position. Little tremors of pain shot up and down his left arm as he put his weight on it. Only when the dislodged bits in his skull seemed to settle did he reopen his eyes.

His head was bent away from the light, so the scope of his vision had vastly improved. He wore loose blue scrubs, the kind that belonged in laboratories or operating rooms. His sleeveless shirt revealed a swath of bandages that began from his left shoulder down to the corresponding elbow. Something felt wrong near the base of his neck on the left side.

Even as he felt for the problem with his right hand, his eyes snapped up to find the faces of the two voices. The one nearest to him had a shock of white hair thick enough to be pulled back into a ponytail and attest to his middle age despite the bleached color. His eyes were hard to see behind the tinted glasses on his face. They were a pair of glasses one might wear if he absolutely needed to use his sight before a correctional laser operation. But mellow-voiced Kabuto seemed comfortable enough with the ungraceful device that he must actually wear them all the time.

Feigning a lack of interest, Sasuke looked past the gently smiling man to the man's superior. That man sat in a chair three meters away, his river of black hair falling over dark clothes that covered much, as was typical of the Lower Levels. Compared to these people, Sasuke was practically naked.

His fingers sank into a circular indentation on the upper part of his shoulder near the neck. It seemed to go even further in, a neat cylindrical shape carved out of his flesh. It alarmed him that he couldn't feel the prodding of his own fingers in that scooped-out hollow; it was like the skin under the pads of his fingers had become a lump of rubbery plastic.

"Anesthesia," said Kabuto in response to Sasuke's glare. "Not of the caliber you're used to, but you don't have to look like a petulant boy. I should advise you not to touch it, though."

Sasuke snatched his hand away as if burned, terrified for several heartbeats that the two sinister men had dealt irreparable damage to his body when he needed it in order to hunt Itachi.

"I'm not surprised that Karin took a liking to him." This from the saturnine man furthest from Sasuke. He held Sasuke's cold stare with an air of amused satisfaction. The skin around the man's eyes was painted strangely in black, the edges sloping down along the bridge of his nose in a decorative effect. "It's to counter the sun's glare, Sasuke."

This man, who was clearly from the Lower Levels, had seen the sun? Impossible.

Yet here Sasuke was….

"Perhaps I should change your bandages while we wait," Kabuto suggested to the man, who looked irked.

"Tayuya is running late."

"She may have been called into the battle sector today…the names are randomly chosen, after all."

"Withdraw hers today. I won't have her slaughter my newest." The man's eyes returned to Sasuke, who had to repress the childish shudder meandering up his spine. It was like receiving the fond regard of one of the old Menagerie's pet snakes. Only, _Sasuke_ was the one in the clear tank, this time.

Kabuto unwrapped the strips of gauze that covered the other man's hand. "Yes, sir." Sasuke watched, sickened as the slightly stained cloth unwound to expose a long-fingered hand whose skin appeared to be sloughing off. An acridly sweet smell pervaded the air.

"Never seen radiation burns before?" The sibilant question reminded Sasuke to guard his expression. "Ah, Sasuke…there is an entire world to show you."

The door to the room slid open behind Sasuke with an audible huff. He turned his head to see a young woman standing at the doorway. Her head was bound up in bandages, but a mane of reddish hair three shades lighter than Karin's escaped the bindings.

"What happened, Tayuya?" said Kabuto.

"F – ing Kidomaru tried to attack me in the arena," snarled the woman called Tayuya. "He got his comeuppance though."

"I will have a word with Kidomaru. Withdraw his name as well, Kabuto." Kabuto nodded, while at the sound of the other man's voice, Tayuya's eyes widened. She bowed respectfully – something that Sasuke doubted she did for anyone else.

"Sir!"

The serpentine smile playing on the man's thin lips became twice as disturbing to witness when the recipient actually responded with devotion. "My children can call me Orochimaru." His glance, flickering towards Sasuke, made a spasm of jealousy slash across Tayuya's face, at which point the man chuckled. "Take him to his new room, Tayuya." The dislike in her face had not escaped Orochimaru. He was – realized Sasuke – fostering it on purpose. "His name is Sasuke. From the Upper Levels."

Tayuya swallowed her anger and shot Sasuke a fiery look, to which he responded with an expression of boredom. This seemed to incense her, but he couldn't care less. "Follow me…Sasuke."

He slid off the long table, forcing his legs to bear his weight without betraying discomfort. His eyes instinctively flew to Orochimaru despite his deep-seated loathing for the man. He hated himself for it.

"If you want to ask _me _questions," said Orochimaru, "earn the right to hear the answers. Run along now, Sasuke."

Clenching his teeth so hard that it hurt, Sasuke followed Tayuya.

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The walls and floors were bare to the point of ugliness. Sasuke, whose eyes were accustomed to color, detested the dull hues of the housing complex. To be perfectly honest, however, his dislike for the environment was only secondary to his low opinion of the people who lived in it.

Tayuya. She was so wrapped up in her aggravation that she didn't hesitate to present her back to him. When he had been captured in Karin's ambush, Sasuke had been taken down from behind. It was entirely possibly that everyone here underestimated his abilities. Tayuya certainly didn't think much of him.

Kabuto. He was unpleasant and rubbed Sasuke the wrong way. He was the one who had given Sasuke the hole in his shoulder and the pain in his arm.

Orochimaru. He was using everyone in this compound for an undetermined purpose. The most dangerous, and an unknown quantity. He apparently considered several of the personnel here his "children" and was looking to make Sasuke an adoptee.

Karin. Sasuke would kill her for her duplicity later.

Sasuke had made careful note of the direction – two turns left, down, one right, go straight until the seventh door, turn left and down – and decided that Tayuya was looping around on purpose. He wasn't meant to know his way to the operating room.

"Tayuya!"

A high, familiar voice; feminine. They met her in a tiled corridor that was no less unremarkable than the previous ones. Sasuke stared at the newcomer coldly. It was Karin.

She avoided his eyes and told Tayuya," I'll take him from here."

The shorter woman sneered. "Lord Orochimaru gave me the job. You're not to molest him."

Karin flushed, the angry color spilling over her pale cheeks in an ugly blotch. "You've been overdue at his cell for fifteen minutes. Were you giving him a tour, or did you lose your way again?"

"I know my way," hissed Tayuya. That she resented Karin was obvious.

"Do you know your place?"

The two women glared at each other. Sasuke looked past Karin at the long corridor and had to admit (if only to himself) that he could very easily lose his way in the blank, white-walled maze. He wasn't even sure if they were underground or not.

"Well." Tayuya's smirk recalled the unpleasant effect of her master's. "I suppose being the jailer of an entire block of babes can give one an inflated sense of self-worth."

Karin shifted her attention to Sasuke. "Please follow me, Sasuke." Points for ignoring Tayuya's quip, but they couldn't save her from the large deficit incurred by her betrayal. He parted company with Tayuya nonetheless, wanting to arrive at _somewhere _before his legs collapsed. Karin's obvious guilt would make her more likely to yield information.

They went straight this time; Tayuya could be heard stalking to the nearest flight of stairs with puerile volume. Halfway down the corridor, Sasuke's instincts were rewarded.

"You won't hold it against me, will you?" Karin asked quietly. Sasuke didn't waste his breath. "It was the only way. Lord Orochimaru will help you. We live together here – or, you will after you move out of the cell block. I don't think it'll take long. You just have to last a few turns in the battle sector."

"What for?"

She flinched a little at the flatness of his tone. "To prove you have the will to learn. All of us – Tayuya, too, even though she acts immature – passed the test. As I'm sure you will." Her over-the-shoulder smile faltered before his stony face. She didn't speak again until they arrived at a door, one door among many in the long corridor, but the only one marked with a number. _101011_.

"You'll be hungry soon. I'll bring you food." She stepped aside after palming the door open. "Go in, please." As he walked past her, Karin's hand caught his right wrist. "Sasuke – "

He stilled, freezing the girl with the iciest look he could marshal while drugged to the gills. Her fingers uncurled at once.

"I'm _sorry,"_ Karin whispered. Sasuke walked all the way into the dismal little room, pathetically grateful that he had power over _someone _in this hazardous, uncharted land. The door slid shut with a soft whirr, much louder than the ones that he had always known and in all likelihood would never see again.

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Sasuke forced himself to make an inventory of the room before sitting on the low bunk that was cut from the side of the wall. There was a metal stool in the far right corner from the door. A water fountain was affixed near the bunk. It was ridiculous.

Sasuke's throat had dried up in the hours since he'd awoken. Now he eased himself off the bunk and pressed down onto the fountain. Clear water spurted up from the mouth on the top. He drank some of it, but it only wet his mouth without satisfying the thirst that had uncoiled in his stomach. He already knew it wouldn't. Frustrated, he shoved himself away, ignoring the burn it gave his left arm. Backlash from the drugs had begun to set in, leaving his skull pounding. Sasuke sank back onto the bunk, resting his lowered head between his hands. His skin felt papery and dry. Flaking like Orochimaru's.

There was an ungraceful puff of air as the door slid open. Refusing to greet the sight of Karin with anything like gratitude on his face, Sasuke spent a few more moments composing his features before he raised his head.

"Hello," said Karin, interpreting his pained irritation as the lingering headache that tormented him. "It'll wear off soon." Her sympathetic gaze scraped over him, more abrasive than soothing on Sasuke's nerves.

She had brought someone. Looking at her slender frame, one wouldn't expect Karin to be able to drag the big man anywhere, but she deposited him on the floor near Sasuke's feet without much visible strain. "He's the freshest I could get from Sector D." An expectant quality floated behind her eyes as she stepped back. Sasuke glanced down at the man, who had an open wound along his right forearm. Discoloration along his cheekbone and exposed left foot, and the untidy, battered state of his clothes, testified to recent battle. The armband symbol on his upper arm matched Karin's.

Karin was worrying her lower lip when Sasuke glanced up. "You don't like him?"

He could hear the man's labored breathing. "What?" He snapped. At that instant, his stomach snarled.

"You're hungry…I don't understand." She stared at him for a bit longer before realization dawned across her features. "Oh. _Oh._ I see." Crouching, she pulled the unconscious man towards her. Deft fingers unsnapped the high collar. "You do it like this…less messy than biting." Her sharp, hard nail cut smoothly into the skin of the exposed neck. "At least, until your canines sharpen up some more…" She bent her head over the man, her hair falling forward like a curtain.

"_Stop," _Sasuke said.

Karin raised her head at the revulsion in his voice. "But…this is what you do. You need to eat."

"I need _food._" He didn't want to believe what she had shown him.

"This is," she insisted, holding the man out to him. He made no move for the glistening blood that was beading out and trickling from the shallow wound. Defeated, Karin set the man down again, propping him against the wall below the niche of the bunk. "I'll leave it here, okay? In case you change your mind." She slipped out. The door closed after her.

Three hours later, Sasuke sat on the end of the bunk furthest away from the drained body. Karin had been wrong; his teeth were sharp enough.

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	6. Converging Pieces

**Notes**: Long time no see, but that's because I had no time to type. Anyway, time in the story has elapsed, just as time in the real world has elapsed. Music: Eptesicus (Batman Begins OST). A quick FYI: the crews in the city are located vaguely according to the Naruto-verse Map.

Same warning as previous chapter. Guys, things will happen. Soon. (So hang in there, Odat – and all you lovely people who have this on your alert list.) I've included a tiny preview because I don't know how long it'll take me to type the next bit.

**Disclaimer:**Not mine, not ever.

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He made a snatching motion with his left hand, his fingers curled. His opponent was fast, but still much too slow to stand a chance of surviving. From the moment Orochimaru had decided to pit them against each other, the other man had been destined to have his throat torn out by Sasuke.

As the body slumped to the floor, its partially severed head lolling forwards to hit the ground first, harsh clapping reverberated in the still arena. The applause sounded oddly muffled due to the layers of bandages that bound Orochimaru's hands.

"It was worth Kimimaro's life to know what you are capable of, Sasuke."

Kimimaro, the placid child of Orochimaru, who had prematurely grey hair and a bizarre sense of loyalty to the old vampire, had gone to his death willingly. He had fought with his all, but in the end, he had been ready to give up his life for a stupid test. Sasuke didn't know whom he despised more as he stared at the pathetic carcass at his feet: Kimimaro, Orochimaru, or himself.

He had expected to be paired off against another test subject – perhaps Suigetsu; they had never fought but that man's reputation had reached even Sasuke's ears. Or he might have expected to fight the children whom Orochimaru kept in the cages deep underground, ten of them against one of him – their superb quickness against his own physical and mental agility…but certainly not Kimimaro, who was the strongest fighter that Orochimaru allowed to roam freely.

Sasuke bypassed the tense group of doomed trainees who would be the next to slaughter each other in Sector A. As he strode by them, their snarls died on their lips. A fearful hush quelled the tongues of even the few skeptics. Although Sasuke had not expected Orochimaru to throw away his most trusted lieutenant, apparently many of the other prisoners had anticipated the battle between him and Kimimaro. Now he left the arena and Kimimaro did not – and if they still doubted, they'd see the body with their own eyes quite soon. All the personnel he passed gave him a wide berth; a difficult feat in the narrower corridors. He had never discouraged their aversion, and now that he had assimilated Kimimaro's reputation into his, they were twice as frightened of him.

He found himself rather apathetic about the heightened wariness everyone else seemed to have around him. His moments of satisfaction were rare – the day he received his new weapon, a graceful, clean-lined kusanagi, being one. It granted him a fuller sweep, longer reach, and above all a novel, elegant joy in movement. This was just before he was pitted against those who had once despised him. Sasuke did not ever retain any interest in his sparring partners the moment he surpassed them, but last words tended to linger in an Uchiha's memory. Before her death, grudging praise had slipped through Tayuya's lips. _Killing perfection. _Jirobo, he dispatched too quickly for last words. Kidomaru had gasped with his dying breath, _You're good, you bastard. _When Sakon and Ukon went in the way of their comrades, Kabuto had commented lightly that he, Sasuke, had just destroyed a complete team of the Sound crew.

As he headed back to his cell, he wondered fleetingly about the identity of his next opponent. Even before he reached the door, he saw Karin leaned against the wall, waiting. "You left too soon for Kabuto to tell you, Sasuke." Her shy glance, the coquettish flutter of her lashes, made Sasuke want to close his hands around her neck. Close it around, dig the sharpened nails inwards, cut through the pale skin and stain it red – before he snapped in his impatience, Karin elaborated. "You're moving out of the cell block. Lord Orochimaru already has a mission for you. He told me over the com-link."

If she didn't stop that ridiculous, tentative smiling right now, Sasuke was going to rip a hole through her jugular.

"And I'll be on your team, too."

Sasuke stared at her coldly. She probably thought that was a good thing.

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Sakura had been peering at the screen of a microscope for the better part of an hour when a soft voice made her jump:

"This may help."

Ishin had entered the lab like a soundless wraith, two sealed vials in his hand. Their contents looked identical to Sakura, but he said, "The notched one has untainted blood; the other one, after exposure to the elements and the bio-shot."

She put one hand on her hip. "This time, you really are going to tell me how you – " Her bewilderment grew at his calm smirk. "How did you hide both of those _and _the sample I'm studying right now when Shizune swears she checked you over?"

"I hid them elsewhere before I came. Today I had the chance to retrieve these two." The Leaf had begun to use Ishin on minor missions now. Clearly he had bided his time and thought ahead. Prepared for everything. Sakura accepted the two vials, leaving her admiration unstated, as Ishin preferred.

It had been easy enough to divert Tsunade's attention from the study Sakura was conducting on the first sample – so easy that Sakura still felt a twinge of guilt from this duplicity. She was supposed to be developing a particular type of sedative, but instead Ishin was helping her to research vampires.

While he studied the sample under the scope, she prepared two new slides with the contents of the vials and conducted a quick test with the meter inside the lab. "Ishin…your brother's blood before contamination was within the normal pH range. After exposure, even with the bio-shot, it's 6.45. Your blood is still the most basic sample I've ever tested." They had destroyed that sample soon after testing it, to conceal his origins. "And the sample under the microscope right now is still the most acidic of all."

"The bio-shot had little to no effect on it, then."

Sakura brought the two new slides over, not bothering to state her agreement. It was disconcerting to confirm that the bio-shot only suppressed the mutation from replicating, and that although Lower-Levels people generally died before it manifested, they would, over time, gain a more vampiric nature just by breathing the air. Now they were trying to test altered forms of the original bio-shot on the blood of a vampire that Ishin had come across several months ago. "Here, these are the - "

She broke off and glanced at Ishin when the light over the single entrance flashed green. Someone was about to enter, and evidence of their research was strewn along every counter.

The person on the other side started to speak even before the door opened all the way. "Sakura, it's time for supper and you really should get your head out of whatever you're doing before all the food's gone. Lee's cooking and everyone is scrambling for yesterday's leftov – oh, hi there, Ishin." Ino flashed a smile at him. "What would you be doing with the giant forehead over there?"

Sakura didn't know whether to groan in relief that her friend had yet to notice everything in the lab, or to grimace at her behavior. It wasn't like Ino's suddenly dulcet voice came as a surprise. In the last few weeks, Ishin had distinguished himself during training hours, causing the majority of men in the Leaf to resent him and an equally significant fraction of the women to become ridiculously infatuated. The newest adult member of the Leaf didn't court the female attention and discouraged their advances with invariable politeness. It made Sakura, the only woman whom others _knew _Ishin talked to, privileged. And that had just sparked off a silly rivalry between her and Ino.

This was a problem, because then Sakura had started to look at Ishin with different eyes, too. He had been an intellectual attraction when he answered her questions – he'd lived and known things that she could only dream about – but because of Ino's subtle (and sometimes unsubtle) influence, Sakura often found herself staring at Ishin's mouth when he spoke, only catching the gist of what he was saying about filtered vents and compounds in time to make a coherent counterpoint. Sometimes she saw a flash of amusement in his impossible amber eyes when he caught her attention wandering. It was all Ino's fault.

"Ino, this is a secure lab and you can't just come in without authorization," Sakura said with strained patience.

Ino's golden eyebrows arched higher. "Oh, but I do have clearance, my sadly mistaken friend. From Tsunade herself. She wants you in her office."

Sakura sighed, stripping off her gloves and muttered about irresponsible teachers who needed stronger hangover cures than would ever exist in the world. A coy smile appeared on Ino's face as the blonde woman started into the lab.

"Ishin, dear, you must be hungry for something…"

_Oh, subtle, Ino,_ thought Sakura. She glanced at her erstwhile lab partner, whose gaze flickered to her. "I'll clean this up."

"Thanks. I'll see you." She dumped her gloves into the disposal bin and left the lab, trusting Ishin to handle Ino. Tsunade's office was in the northern wing of the Home, also underground. The labyrinth of passages might have confused even people who had belonged to the Leaf all their life, but Sakura knew them like the back of her hand. She had hurried many times down the twisting corridors in response to emergency summons, only to find that a drunken Tsunade wanted her to get the pain killers from the top shelf of the cabinet which she was too lazy to reach herself.

Well, it was true that a long apprenticeship disillusioned the apprentice with the teacher, but Sakura owed Tsunade much more than she could repay. She gave the door to the office a perfunctory knock and entered straightaway.

Wonders of wonders, her teacher was sitting upright behind the desk. Without preamble, Tsunade said, "Finally, Sakura. I have a mission for you."

"Fine, thank you. And how are you doing on this wonderful afternoon, Tsunade?"

"Don't make me come over there and give your skull a good whack," grumbled Tsunade. "I'm already suffering from alcohol deprivation." Sakura bit the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning childishly. "Anyway, we've been communicating with the Rain crew for some time and now we've reached the point in negotiations where our delegates have to meet in person. Between the two of us, all we've agreed upon with Rain is a truce for the duration of the negotiations, but we're hoping to form an alliance. Here are the terms we're presenting…" After she had covered all of them, Tsunade paused. "Any questions?"

"Yes," said Sakura. "Where are we meeting them?"

"The neutral territory between Leaf and Sand," Tsunade said crisply. _River _territory, as it was cynically called by the crews. Home to the greatest chemical spills in the city. Surely Tsunade saw that arranging a meeting there was toxic, not to mention a little provocative to the Sand. "You'll get a more detailed briefing when you bring your team here." Her gaze sharpened. "Well? Get to it!"

Sakura bowed and scuttled off. Tsunade with alcohol was scary, but not nearly as scary as Tsunade without it.

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She crossed off names during lunch, somehow managing to filter out Ino's jibes as to why she still sat with them and not with Ishin, further down the same table. Decision made, Sakura went to Neji first. The Hyuuga's efficiency and mission reports, not to mention everything she knew of him, inspired confidence. He raised his eyebrows expectantly when she drew him aside.

"I have an important mission, and Tsunade gave me the luxury of the choice. Can you work with Ishin?"

"Yes." The Hyuuga's brief hesitation was a mark of honesty – he'd prefer not to, but he could.

"Will you work as part of my team?"

He nodded. "Anyone else, aside from Ishin?"

"I'm going to ask them now. Meet me in Tsunade's office at the fifteenth hour."

One down, two to go. Sakura knew she wanted Ishin on the team. First of all, because she worked well with him in the lab but had only heard of his brilliance on missions. Secondly, she didn't want him going ahead with the research while she was gone. It surprised her that her distrust ran so deep despite her liking of Ishin on a personal level. Perhaps because she remained the only person in the Leaf who knew his secret.

But when she posed the question to him, Ishin said, point-blank, "No."

The instantaneous refusal made her recoil, partially from hurt. "Why?"

"You asked my opinion…If I _do _have a choice, I would rather not go on the mission." He met her eyes with equanimity, having paused in his eating out of politeness.

"And if the crew boss ordered it?"

"Then this would be a pointless discussion." His face had closed, becoming more unreadable than usual. Sakura hated how he could blank his eyes so easily and shut her out.

"I don't want to force you to go on this mission…but I really wish you would."

"Why is that?" A note of bland curiosity flitted into his voice. Tired of leaning, Sakura dropped into a seat, which the considerate (or annoyed) diner next to Ishin had just vacated.

"Because…" Because she wanted to see for herself how good he was on missions. Because he was a deadly fighter, but so were a lot of people – so that reason didn't float. Because knowing Ishin was nearby made Sakura innately happy, but that didn't work if he didn't want to be there. Because of the research.

Ishin waited in silence, although Sakura knew from past interaction that he had less patience than people gave him credit for. "Because I don't trust you here alone."

"I see."

Sakura started getting up from the seat, but his next words slowed her.

"I'll work as part of your team." His eyes watched her with a total absence of affection, and for a second, Sakura almost reconsidered her choice.

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Sasuke hated depending on Karin to track down their quarry, but in this case, he had no choice. Sight and smell failed him in the murky slum quarters where they had been dispatched – "they" being him and his new team, which consisted at the moment of Karin and Suigetsu. It was a distasteful fact of life that the wretched woman could locate and tail a target just a bit faster than Sasuke himself could.

River territory was a dead section of the city. As Karin had explained (and he did occasionally listen, even if he feigned not to), it had been devoid of life since the evacuation years ago during the First Extermination Wars. The Upper-Levels forces had smoked and bombed the refugees out of hiding, and the residue from that devastating siege continued to poison the air to this day. The fourth article of _Regulations of the Lower Levels_, forbidding the use of radioactive or explosive weaponry in inter-crew wars, had also been put into effect because of the incident.

The rank air over River territory gave off a stench strong enough to make even Karin pause, time and again, to confirm their bearings. "We've outpaced the Rain," Karin said in a low voice. "They will be here any minute."

A red flare. A member of the Rain crew entered the obscuring mist, picking an uneven path through the ancient wreckage on the ground. His companion, following behind him, asked, "What was that for?"

"I thought someone was there."

There was a swift gust of wind, come and gone with the faintest snarl. The two delegates from the Rain stiffened, weapons drawn and pointed blindly into the thick grey haze. An opportune cloud curled around them.

All of a sudden, the first man felt himself jerked back by the nape of the neck. His cry caused his companion to spin on his heel, in time to catch the spray of dark blood in the face. Cursing, the surviving man aimed – at nothing. The body of his comrade sprawled before him. As he took a step back, his heel hit the corpses of his other teammates, including the one who should be hidden.

A callous, feminine voice to his left made him flinch from that direction. "Did you really think that we needed the assistance of the Rain? Let this be a warning to you that the Leaf is the strongest power in this quarter. Go back to where you came from and deliver this message to your superiors."

The man made a full rotation, now seeing shadows of enemies where there were none, fearful and alone. Abruptly, he locked his weapon and hurried out of the treacherous River land. His comrades stayed behind, their eyes already clouding with an opaque film.

A gentle air current caused the smoke to shift. A pale man, revealed in the temporary gap, stepped over the mangled bodies. His boot crunched on a hand; the sickening crack incited a disapproving hiss from the woman opposite him.

"That was pretty damn boring," drawled Suigetsu. "And it's not like we really needed reminding of your lack of speech-giving abilities."

"Shut up, you imbecile." Karin picked her way through the terrain with considerably more care, though it seemed more out of a desire to preserve the pristine state of her attire than to maintain the silence. "Strange…I could swear that Sasuke was with us, but…"

"I am," stated Sasuke flatly. Both of his teammates jumped.

"Damn it, don't – "

"_Be quiet!_" Karin's emphatic whisper earned her a scowl. Suigetsu opened his mouth, and Sasuke moved ahead, tired of yet another bout of bickering between his discontented teammates. Finding the rendezvous location was more productive than listening.

"All this walking made me hungry," Suigetsu complained. "Can't we pick off that other delegation, too?"

"Lord Orochimaru didn't say to kill them in our orders," Karin said at once.

"Stop being such a bitch – oh wait, I forgot; that would nullify your existence." Suigetsu flashed the irate woman a sharp-toothed grin. "As I was about to say, Mr. Oro won't care so long as the wars between crews start earlier. I mean, he has a grudge against the Leaf, right? The hell any of us know why, but he's not going to cry for a few Leafys gone the way of Kimimaro."

Karin stiffened, most likely in disapproval of the light way in which Suigetsu had referred to Kimimaro. Dead or no, he had been one of the strongest of the Sound. "God, Suigetsu. You're going to jeopardize our mission just because you can't behave in a civilized way for longer than half an hour – "

Suigetsu's exaggerated expression of agony did not elude Karin's attention. Her voice rose, becoming even more strident and grating. Any louder and one of them would have to die.

"Cut it out," ordered Sasuke in monotone. Suigetsu saluted.

"Aye, aye, captain."

Karin glowered in disgust. Sasuke ignored her. "Put on the Rain armbands. We'll find the delegation from the Leaf and decide then."

"W-wait – " Karin almost put her hand on his arm, but weeks of interacting with Sasuke made her hand pull back at the last moment so that it hovered over his sleeve. "You're actually _considering_ Suigetsu's suggestion?"

Sasuke had learned in a very short time that making a decision that would shut up Suigetsu invariably provoked argument from Karin, and vice versa. And he didn't believe they even despised each other as much as they professed to.

"Karin," he snapped. If any other person besides Sasuke and Orochimaru had spoken to her in that tone, Karin would have merely continued her tirade. But he was Sasuke, and she lapsed into reluctant silence. "Let's go."

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TBC – Preview:

_Tenten's voice reached their ears via the com-link: "Rain is here. I can see their armbands."_

_Sakura felt the past hour's tension creep up her bones. Her heart rate sped up a little from the nervous energy. "Calm down," said Neji at the same time Ishin said a similar warning. The two exchanged mildly irritated looks. Sakura pressed the button on her neckpiece._

"_Stay hidden." _


	7. Adversaries

**Notes: **When I reread the last chapter that I had posted for Fifth Life, I felt incredibly bad for leaving it there. Thank MistressLouise for reminding me that I had a story to tell. Mental soundtrack credits to Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, as always, for their beautiful work on _Batman Begins_. Tracks include: _Myotis, Molossus, Nycteris_.

Also, the italicized preview on the previous chapter? Pretend it's happened. XD

**Warning: **Character death. If I could tell everyone's story, I'd try, but here it would detract from the main plot.

**Disclaimer: **This is a work of _fan_fiction. Meaning that Suigetsu can qualify as 'sociable.'

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

"That's odd," said Karin. Sasuke didn't bother to ask as she raised her head, sniffing the air. "I don't think the smoke would affect me so much, but there's someone in that white shack over there that smells a lot like you, Sasuke. _Like _you, but not exactly. Two males and a female. There's another female over…there. Behind the niche that lost its grating and the second building to its right. It was a good hiding place…" _But I found her. _Karin's subconscious was fishing for his approval.

Her remark on a "similar" person made Sasuke stiffen and arrive at the only conclusion his mind was capable of: _Itachi's here?_

"Take down the sentry. Quietly."

"Dibs," said Suigetsu as exuberantly as he could in sotto voce. He was gone in a flash. Karin stepped up.

"If we're going to attack them, I can take apart the grate on the northwest vent."

At Sasuke's curt nod, she, too, disappeared from his side. He spent three seconds savoring the solitude before bounding forward into the perfect cover of the smoke.

Suigetsu took the sentry-woman out with relative discretion, but he didn't notice the wire she tripped before going down.

- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The heads of all three Leaf delegates inside the building snapped up at the _thrum _of the near-invisible wire which was threaded through a gap in the vent. Tenten had kicked it in warning – meaning that she hadn't been able to alert them via com-link. Sakura met the eyes of Neji and Ishin. Her hand reached up and turned off the piece at her ear and neck.

"Tsunade told us to avoid battle if this situation arose," she said in a swift, low voice. She slid open the secret trapdoor – the lid to one of the sewer pipes, as it were – beneath the table. "Ishin, you go first." When he made no move to obey, Sakura straightened. "What's the problem?"

"Tactically," he said calmly, "the primary fighter is the first to advance and the last to retreat."

Tactically, Neji was the best person to play the role of Prime, being a strong fighter with a preference for close-range. Sakura had named Itachi as Prime in order to test him, but the situation had changed. Tenten, the best weapons mistress and sharpshooter that the Leaf had turned out in generations, had been their best safeguard against new technology, and now she was down.

Sakura suppressed the urge to snap at Ishin. "I am the squad leader and I am ordering you now. You are the most likely to survive a journey alone back to the crew-home without leading our enemies there. If you fear that your loyalty will be questioned, take this and tell them it was an order."

Undoing a knot inside a tight sleeve was tricky, but she managed and pulled out the worn, dull red ribbon. It had been an old gift from Ino, and every one of Sakura's friends knew she wore it everywhere. Ishin allowed her to place it in his hands.

"The vent to the northwest is the weakest. They will tear it out of the opening." He crouched and then dropped down into the putrid darkness.

Neji stared at Sakura with fierce white eyes as she slid the lid over the opening. She gave him a wry smile. "I know better than to tell you to follow." The Hyuuga returned the smile, reminding her just why it was that no one ever messed with Tenten or Lee either unless one had a death wish. She felt a brush of comfort that he was there with her.

There was a faint popping sound from the vent, a _ping _as the metal screws bounced off another hard, shiny surface. Sakura took an acid-egg out of her small satchel and threw it at the vent opening. The projectile burst on impact, to the sound of an enraged hiss. She doubted it had hit anyone's face, but perhaps a hand or the back of a shirt. The acid was highly corrosive, and burned through three layers of seda in a matter of seconds.

Sakura's glance almost made it to her teammate before the door burst open. Neji's image blurred as he moved to engage the Rain attacker at once. He was in his element and in control of the situation; Sakura leveled her gun at the vent opening instead and counted to two.

Her shot discharged in time for the apparition to leap to the side with inhuman grace. The bullet grazed her vest harmlessly and the woman dropped onto the tabletop. She circled to the left of Sakura, who fired once more. The woman's fist whipped upwards to her breastbone. And then she opened it, showing the poison dart that lay captive in her palm. Her smile could only be described as an expression of civilized violence. She looked and moved (Sakura thought, aiming) like someone who might love to dismember, only neatly.

"Hi," the woman said. "I think you're the one I owe a bit of acid burn to – "

A blotch of opaque liquid flew towards Sakura, who threw herself sideways and nearly cost Neji his life. His Rain opponent hurled him to the other side of the room and spun on his heel. This, for Sakura, was as close to point-blank range as any. The foreign man howled as her shot ripped through his skin, embedding itself deep into his shoulder along the natural line connecting it to the neck.

Neji took the chance to shout one word at Sakura: "Tenten!"

The woman who refused to take a hit was diving towards her. Sakura pulled herself up at the doorframe with one hand on the crumpled steel lining, essentially throwing herself at the mercy of whoever was outside. Her enemy, who had angled her leap to take off Sakura's head with her bare hands, kicked off from the battered door at a forty-five degree angle and cleared the room as well.

Sakura found the trigger without taking her eyes off the woman and fired five rounds that should have connected but all missed. They hit the building behind her target harmlessly. She gritted her teeth. _No_ _human should be able to move that fast! _If worst came to worst – and this was probably it – she'd have to get Tenten and flee the area with Neji. Hopefully, neither of her teammates had expired yet.

A gigantic crash from inside the building made even the _concrete_ walls shudder. Sakura retreated a few more steps. When she turned her head again, the woman before her had disappeared, ghosting into the mist.

Thinking quickly, Sakura launched herself forward and up. Sure enough, something whooshed past below her. She landed and – instead of taking the precious time to reload a cartridge in the gun – threw a shot like it was a practice dart. It was a nearer miss. The woman spun around, teeth bared…and then Sakura saw her fangs.

_Oh shit. _These were monsters of the level two kind.

The woman slashed towards Sakura's face with curled fingers. Sakura leaned away and the nails scored down her cheek – it may have been a shallow wound, but it burned – narrowly missing her eyes. She blocked its downward path with her gun so that the nails slipped off the cool metal and took a skip backwards for good measure. Sakura intended to spare her weapon only a glance, but ended up staring a bit too long at the titanium casing. The nails had left furrows.

She ducked, rammed the gun at her attacker; removed it as she realized at last that this would be a short-range battle. Ducking and twisting and using the other woman's – the _vampire's – _momentum against her, she wondered where Tenten might be. Her experienced teammate had hidden herself so well that Sakura couldn't think of how to find her when she herself was fighting to stay alive.

The woman caught her by the wrist and, with an effortless tug, snapped it and sent Sakura flying into the concrete wall. Sakura kicked off with her feet, redirecting herself at her enemy. But she was tiring, while her opponent's speed seemed to give her a much longer reach. A vicious punch to the gut sent Sakura skidding back, feet spread and her one good hand braced on the ground. Another jab to her chest, and something popped inside with an agonizing burst of pain. She doubled over. A hand buried itself into her hair, yanking her into an upright kneeling position on the sharp-pebbled, uncomfortable ground. The next time Sakura coughed, a dribble of blood, pink-tinged, splattered onto the dark front of her clothes. Her scalp felt lacerated; her chest burned as she drew in a ragged breath. A worrying coppery taste filled her mouth.

The hold on her head tightened. "Sasuke!"

A faint breeze slipped around the contours of her face, like someone's exhalation. Tilting her eyes upwards, Sakura saw the lower portion of serviceable black boots. She kept her head up in that awkward position so that the cruel hand clenching her hair wouldn't rip her scalp off completely. The woman behind her seemed to have every intention of doing so.

"Suigetsu is still inside, but he must be finished," stated Sakura's captor in the tone of one reporting to a respected boss. At these words, Sakura realized that no sound had come from within the meeting-place for several minutes.

"Where has the other one gone?"

Sakura sent a feeble wish after Ishin to speed him on his journey back to the Leaf. If the Rain worked freely with vampires…or even if they did not collaborate voluntarily…the Leaf needed the warning.

"…There only needs to be one survivor to carry the message. I'm sorry; I should have held him here and let you choose."

"No…it's just like him to leave after bringing bad fortune to others." The bitterness that shaded the flat, glacial voice spoke of familiarity. A spark of curiosity pulled Sakura's gaze higher, past high boots and belts and a long, strange weapon, past moderately broad shoulders, to rest on the face of the most handsome man she had ever seen. This was the one against whom she judged all others and found them wanting. Even Ishin's physical beauty failed the test, if only because she had seen his brother first. This couldn't be anyone other than Ishin's brother. They looked so alike.

He looked older than the face that plagued her conscience. It had something to do with the impersonal stare of those obsidian eyes. A chuckle scraped out of Sakura's dry throat at the circularity of her life. To each action, its consequence. But then the fingers in her hair dug into her scalp.

"What's so amusing?" inquired the woman behind her in a faux-pleasant voice.

Sakura's eyes never left the man's face. "I made you what you are," she said, no longer shaking from hysterical laughter. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

The victim of her once-good intentions seemed, for the first time, to focus his gaze on her. In that moment, Sakura almost forgot her regret that he had survived and become the monster he was now.

- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The woman of the Leaf crew whom Karin had captured was not unique as an individual, but belonged to an exclusive group nonetheless. There was a rare steadiness in the clear green of her eyes that he didn't often see in Karin's victims, a composure that was part-fatalism and part-determination. Or perhaps she just didn't know enough to be afraid.

That suspicion made Sasuke turn the full force of his glare on the woman – _I couldn't care less if Karin disemboweled you and left you here_ – so that she lowered her head at last and he could no longer see the color of her eyes.

"Don't presume to think that you shaped me into who and what I am." His thoughts shifted to more important matters: namely, the whereabouts of his brother. He had been so close. Still, he could question her later at the compound, and there was no need to linger; for all the woman knew, the Rain _had _betrayed her crew.

- "No," said the woman in a soft voice. "I have, more than you know."

Unable to believe her audacity, Sasuke slanted his gaze in her direction. The woman was still looking at the ground.

"And I have to correct my mistake," she went on. Her whole demeanor showed a certain level of detachment. This was usually a coping mechanism to help one behave rationally, but she wasn't being rational or prudent at all.

"By killing me, I suppose." Sasuke heard himself say in scathing tones. Karin displayed uncharacteristic wisdom by holding her tongue, although he knew even better than she how out-of-character this discussion – especially with a prisoner – was for him.

"No…by curing you."

Sasuke knelt on impulse. "Look at me," he ordered. The woman raised her head, opening her eyes only when she had completed the motion. The proximity of his face startled her. "This is not something that can be cured." He spoke so that she could see his canines, elongated by the same, warped genes that had bestowed that insatiable thirst on him. "Not in this world."

She swallowed visibly. Sasuke straightened and turned away, satisfied that he had impressed that fact on her. But as he walked, he could've sworn that she replied.

_Worlds can be changed._

- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Naruto had decided that it was time to forage for food. The beast rumbled in agreement, then recoiled when he went to the small cluster of fresh kills on the roadside. He couldn't see why; he hated to kill, and while the air stank, it wasn't toxic to him. Naruto selected the least-damaged of the lot and scanned the area for a niche where he could feed out of sight.

But life was not kind to Naruto. Hardly an instant later, he heard and sensed the presence of a group of strong hunters. Having no desire to fight an already departing retinue, he ducked behind a metal grille in the shadow cast by a crumbling wall.

There was a black-haired one, a bleached-haired one, a blood-headed one, and the last one who was walking with a mild limp. The pale-haired one didn't look so good either. In fact, he looked the worst off and appeared to be enjoying his own dependency on the shoulder reluctantly offered by the red-haired one. With any luck, he'd drop dead and provide Naruto with a dining alternative.

Two males and two females added up to four, an ungainly number compared to the groups of three he tended to run across. Maybe the lighter-haired woman was an auxiliary member. Her hair color intrigued him; once, Naruto had paused before his distorted reflection in a scuffed steel plate. The woman's hair was just a tint lighter than his gums.

That reminded him. His stomach clenched, threatening to release a mutinous growl that would betray his position. Poor beast, he thought, seeing the monster curling its tails around its paws for a sullen wait. Naruto didn't love the creature – practically _hated _it at times. But they'd been together for so long. He had no one else. The beast was the only thing, aside from the odd, startled life-form, that didn't try to kill him on sight.

The black-haired one moved out of formation, his body flickering and reappearing by the bodies that Naruto had inspected minutes earlier. Watching Black-Hair was like having a psychic burst in the brain, a buzz in the ears. Naruto made it a game to see if he could relate the odd sensation to something more concrete. It was like a soft but insistent hum that blocked out all other noise, especially when Black-Hair fizzed and reappeared elsewhere. He might move faster than even Naruto.

"Oy," said Bleached-Hair to Red-Hair, indicating that he wanted to look at bodies, too. Red-Hair shifted and jarred his arm on purpose. Bleached-Hair yelped. None of his companions took notice.

"Someone's been at the bodies."

Naruto continued the game, partly to help himself hide his own presence (s_ink and dwindle to little nothingness, a dark heart so quiet and tiny, not beating but silent, blood trickling in a sluggish crawl through the veins_)…hunger stabbed him (_ignore, ignore_). Small and invisible. (_What does Black-Hair's voice look like? Flat pieces of broken charcoal, all in a sooty heap at the Happy Factory - _)

Strange, but the memory of the place tugged at his chest. Familiarity. The longest he'd ever stayed in one place, a building abandoned and vacant and unbothered by people who didn't care enough about Naruto to _hurt_ him (_…just kill him_). Home.

"Whoever it is might still be here." Red-Hair's voice was high and tinny; it pinged on Naruto's ears like a muted alarm-bell (though most of the ones he tripped were buzzers, loud and painful). It sounded okay, but its owner seemed unhappy. Red-Hair turned her head, sniffing, sniffing. Drawing the stinky air deep into her nostrils. Naruto could have told her not to. He recognized some bits in it that a Naruto-killer had once sprayed in his face to make him torpid and unresisting. That had been a close call.

Naruto was taking shallow, soundless breaths, but also used his eyes. Red-Hair gave up after a few more attempts, though she almost turned her head in the right direction. Naruto scratched a reminder in his head that people with a better sense of smell than him _did _exist. He'd be more careful from now on.

"Nothing," said Red-Hair. Black-Hair lingered, suspicious, then moved on. The small company turned north towards the Electric-Smell People and the Happy Factory.

Naruto came out of hiding one-thousand and three-hundred thumps of his heart later. He didn't go near the corpses that Black-Hair had inspected.

- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

They had murdered Tenten.

No, worse than that – they had defiled and drained Tenten, the male vampire called Suigetsu and the female, Karin. They slaked their thirst as if she were some kind of container, just a vessel for food storage. Inanimate. They had discarded the body where it was.

If she had the strength, Sakura would have cried for the Hyuuga, because he was the one who had to wake up to the knowledge of failure, one teammate of his first cell dead in a hideous manner, the other most likely gone the same way. Worse than even this was the opportunity he would have to revisit the memory as he lay among the wreckage, immobilized by his wounds.

Because Suigetsu, apparently, had left Neji alive. His teammates – and Sakura – found out about half an hour after they had left River territory behind them. "You know," the man started, gesturing feebly with the bruised arm he had around Karin's neck. The woman supported her teammate with her mouth set in a perpetual grimace. "I think I'll go back sometime and make a vampire of him. If he's not already dead, obviously." His brows drew together briefly, but relaxed almost at once. "Eh, what the hell, I bet our boy Sasuke here could recruit him with a snap of his jaws, aye?"

The man was clearly out of his mind. His teammate shoved him away from her, shrieking as he sprawled (and then decided to remain on his back). "You left him _alive_. _Alive! _Are you insane? How could you even – "

"Hey," Suigetsu drawled, "one or two, it doesn't matter. The Leaf still gets the same message."

"If he was strong enough to smash even you up like this, you should have _killed _him! Not left him around to recover!"

"So you _do_ think I'm strong! Aw, Karin, I'm blushing."

She delivered a vicious kick to his ribs, eliciting a howl of "Bitch!" from Suigetsu. Sakura seized the chance to look around at the unfamiliar streets. If this was how efficient a team her captors made, escape might actually be viable. By reflex, she began to scan the neighborhood for cover; small alleys were ideal mazes in which to lose pursuers. Although she didn't often travel this far north into the other city quarters, every active member of the Leaf knew the sewer systems by heart.

"Tenten."

Karin's sharp voice made Sakura's head snap up. She made a full turn, her heart soaring with sudden, impossible hope. But then logic set in. How would Karin know her name, anyway? It wasn't as though there had been much opportunity for introductions in the heat of battle. Sakura's eyes paused on the other woman, who wore a look of snide exasperation, the kind one wears before taking out undeserved antagonism on a third party. "Are you dumb as well as deaf?"

Sakura had never hated any of her targets. They had been _subjects_, part of a mission, kills of necessity. At this moment, a strange anger swept over her, heightening her senses and coursing in her veins. She had never wanted to kill someone more than she did now. The woman seemed to notice her intent. Karin's eyes widened in surprise before her customary expression of disdain narrowed them again.

"Don't even think about it," Karin snapped. "And walk faster."

Silence, except for the scraping of soles against the rough ground.

Suigetsu was the first to ask her later, a shrewd gleam lighting the eyes behind those uneven, frost-pale bangs. "Tenten's not _your_ name, is it?"

Sakura was seated as far from them as they would allow. She gave him a measuring glance. "It's Sakura."

"Nice," offered Suigetsu. Karin shot him a scornful look; Sakura got the feeling that her aggravation motivated Suigetsu to continue his chatty overtures.

"What do you mean by saying that to a _prisoner_, Suigetsu?" Karin spat the word as if it were a mouthful of Lee's undiluted cooking. Even the vague memory of Lee's dishes brought an involuntary smile to Sakura's face, as the product of his enthusiastic efforts just straddled the line between compost and drain cleaner.

"I mean, it's a nice name." Suigetsu grinned at Sakura, revealing a grotesque set of teeth all filed to points. "Hey, now we can start a We Hate Karin Collective. Half the compound should have automatic membership."

"Shut up," hissed Karin. Her face, formerly the color of clotted cream, began to take on the same shade as her hair.

"Careful now, you don't want Sasuke dear to sign up." Suigetsu turned his infuriating smirk on his teammate. "Which might happen if you start another monologue…those are crazy annoying. You should patent them for interrogation purposes."

Sakura closed her eyes and leaned the side of her face against the cold metal sheet that she had propped her back against. This might be the only break her captors would take; without food, she had to conserve energy to remain worth keeping alive. Why she still cared, she couldn't really say. Maybe the challenge that her stupid mouth had blurted to Sasuke was binding her with the obligation to fulfill it. That necessarily required her to survive the ordeal of travel.

A distant thunder rattled the walls of her stomach.

"Sakura."

Her eyes blinked open, her hand uncurling automatically to accept what Sasuke held out. His gloves were fingerless, revealing digits as pale as hers, perhaps even whiter. But they looked longer and stronger, less slender. The pill in her palm was spherical and familiar – one of the generic medications that Lower-Levels soldiers took to pull long shifts. She pushed it into her mouth. The pill went down her parched throat with a slight bump.

To her surprise, Sasuke was still seated on the steel crate opposite her when she looked up. His coldly speculative visage and soot-black stare made her uncomfortable, even if her reserves had run too low for her to feel excessive fear.

"Thank you," she said. She needed to keep her face tilted to look at him, but baring her throat to a vampire didn't sit well with her. She compromised by drawing an arm closer and tucking a hand under her chin.

"Why did you?"

For one insane, ridiculous second, the question left her nonplussed. What in the world did he mean? Did he _not _want her polite gratitude? Fortunately, her mind had a quick recovery mechanism. "I – it was…" Not that it gave her any sort of eloquence. "You were dying."

"So?"

His terseness shattered the fragile, hazy net of excuses that she had been marshalling. She didn't _have _the words to explain. It was a choice long past that she overanalyzed, reviewed again and again, when in reality a combination of things had driven it: the greenish-grey light on the street, the chill in her fingers, the solid reassurance of the gun. Throw in the sudden discovery of a body, the body of someone who wasn't much more than a boy, who wasn't actually dead. She had never killed anyone face-to face before; in some ways she had still been an innocent at sixteen. Taking down a "subject" in crossfire was nothing compared to leaving another person to die. It had not been in her to do that, although since then, guilt and fear had dogged her steps, driving her to walk away from countless others. What a fool she had been to think that, just because this boy, now a man – now a vampire – belonged to the Upper Levels, their paths would never cross.

The enormity of what she had caused and how exactly she had failed her team even before their mission crashed onto her. She was tired of excusing herself, of lying. " I was being irresponsible. That was all." Her voice cracked.

A spasm of emotion skipped through Sasuke's face. It was as if someone had – however briefly – flipped the switch that controlled his expressions. Then a look of even greater annoyance replaced it. "Don't cry."

Her depression didn't survive the callous order. "I wasn't about to," she snapped, knowing very well that the tears had been on the verge of spilling over. When she got forcefully onto her feet, it was her fury that spilled over into words. "Isn't there someplace we should be going?"

The man dispelled her childish satisfaction at being able to glare down at him when he stood. His eyelevel was three inches above hers. Sakura made a conscious effort to stare straight over his shoulder, but the tickle of his breath near her ear made her flinch in spite of her anger.

"Don't forget what you are," he said coldly, moving past her to the other two vampires. Sakura remained where she was for a minute longer to gather her shredded composure. Sasuke's presence was white and sharp, lingering in his wake. It was as if an electric current trailed him and the simple brush of his sleeve could singe her. Sakura's eyes narrowed in resolve.

_I am of the Leaf crew, _she thought. _I am stronger than that._

Suigetsu, watching Sasuke stalk towards them (Karin's face lit up with irritating avidness), marveled from the storm clouds in his leader's eyes that he had not killed their captive. Then Suigetsu saw Sakura's expression as she strode towards them, and the irreverent nerve in him that so often infuriated Karin wondered how Sasuke had come out the short exchange unscathed.

- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --


	8. Choose

**Notes: **I'm really excited about updating, merely because the part I was writing (two or three chapters removed, sadly) indicated that something was going to happen. Also, I went to see _The Dark Knight. _Please do see it, everyone.

**Disclaimer: **I don't actually want them. I've made them so messed up, anyway.

Theme: _Barbastella, _from the Batman Begins OST.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Orochimaru let the two other members of Sasuke's team leave before addressing the problem of the fourth person who had returned with them. "This is neither a petting zoo nor an orphanage, Sasuke."

Sasuke willed himself to be still, even though there were a few choice retorts to that – a coolly disbelieving _it's not? _being one of them.

"As such…" Orochimaru's reptilian gold eyes hardened without warning; it was rare enough that he came down in person to speak. "I forbid you to bring back any pets. Unless you're willing to give a reason? If it's a male urge, I wouldn't be surprised. Although I thought you'd grown out of that before you came here, Sasuke."

When the baiting provoked no response, the old vampire grew testy. "Do you like to play with your food? There's plenty in the compound, but I don't think that's the reason. Speak, or your human won't leave the infirmary room alive."

"It's a personal matter," Sasuke said flatly. "One that doesn't concern you."

Predictably, his temerity widened Orochimaru's thin mouth into a grim smile. "Arrogant words, boy."

"If I don't dispose of Sakura within a month, then I will divulge the reason and hand her over to you." He schooled his face to a stony mask, waiting as Orochimaru deliberated.

"Two weeks," was the amused verdict. "And I shall see her when she's recovered her senses, whether or not you manage to wring information out of…Sakura, is it?"

The back of Sasuke's hands tensed in embarrassment for the meaningless slip of tongue, but his face obeyed him. "Fine," he bit out.

Orochimaru watched him through half-lidded eyes. In some ways, Sasuke was still very much the spoiled Upper-Levels brat. "Dismissed. And remember…bring her to me."

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

She lay supine on the raised metal table, clothed in the thin blue scrubs that Sasuke last remembered wearing the day he had entered the compound. Her bare arms were pale and slender. She looked very fragile, almost – as Sasuke had been conditioned to the many layers of Lower-Level dwellers – naked. If the old serpent put her name on the battle lists, she'd be killed for sure. Perhaps among the first ten down.

Kabuto was dabbing something from a flat, opaque jar on the cuts on Sakura's face with a swab. He paused as Sasuke drew nearer. The swab was discarded into a bin and a solicitous hand brushed stray locks of hair from Sakura's wide forehead. Sasuke felt an impulse to slap the hand away, but the gesture ended quickly.

"Were you concerned for her?" Kabuto's mild, sideways glance only worsened Sasuke's temper. He jerked his head away from the other man's speculative stare to observe the woman's serene expression. Not too long ago, her features had been contorted in anger, bravely – or stupidly – ignoring the possible consequences of his wrath. Sasuke often wondered if bravery and stupidity were interchangeable. He didn't regret being ungentle when he had told her not to cry. He hated being around crying women. It reminded him of Mother.

Karin had learned to bite down on her tears very early on. Sakura would, too.

"I'll give the two of you a moment alone." Kabuto's smile derided him. "You can move her to your room, or wait for her to wake up. She should be fine now that I've seen to all her injuries."

"Even her rib." Sakura had borne up reasonably well for a human on the journey back, but lagged further and further behind as they traveled. Finally, he had carried the half-conscious woman instead. He remembered her cry of pain when he adjusted his grip and jolted her side.

"Of course, but feel free to check for yourself."

Sasuke's eyes bored holes into the back of Kabuto's skull as the other man left. Unfortunately, the only effect it seemed to have on the man was to make him chuckle under his breath.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Cold. So cold. Stiffness linked her joints like a steel frame. A dead light behind her eyelids warned her not to wake up.

An air current that had lost its way crawled over her arms, raising bumps on her skin. She was _naked. _The shock of remembered humiliation shoved her upright into a sitting position. Her chin touched her clavicle as she curled painfully against the light, air, and uneasy rigidity of her bones. She rubbed her arms, squeezing her eyes shut in farewell to the more comfortable darkness behind their lids.

She opened them and saw blue, thin fabric. Or, as Ino liked to put it, lab rat clothing.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Sasuke met Sakura's wild, searching gaze. Once her eyes located him in the room, they fixated on him as if he was the only thing that anchored Sakura to her sanity.

"What happened?"

"Nothing of interest," he said, sliding down to his feet from his perch on the parallel table. Little bouts of shivering rippled through her body. Sasuke paused to consider the temperature of the air on his face. It wasn't that chilly. Reaching out, he took Sakura's wrist in his hand.

At once, he felt the rapid pulse of hot, crimson life racing through her veins, just beneath the skin. He hadn't fed since his return, and his mouth watered. He clenched his jaw, swallowing the hunger. Sakura's wrist slipped from his fingers. "Follow me."

He slowed his normal pace so that she could keep him in sight but not venture too close as they rushed down the long corridor, up the stairs to his room. He palmed the door open for her. "Go in."

Sakura paused, breaking out of her docile obedience. "Sasuke, you – "

"_Get in._" He knew from the startlement on her face that his eyes had flashed red. This time, she hurried in. With the door safely between them, Sasuke broke into a dead run that had the handful of workers in the hallway turning their heads, trying to see if they had only imagined a blur darting past them.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

By the time Sasuke came back, Sakura was ravenous. She jumped up from the edge of the bed – aside from the hard chair and the desk top, it'd been the only place to sit – as soon as the door shifted. Sasuke's gaze swept around the room, as if taking inventory of the damage she'd wreaked. There wasn't any, to be honest. What wasn't furniture was locked. The two thinner-looking doors might have been a closet and a bathroom respectively, but they were sealed against everything except (she guessed) Sasuke's hand. A water fountain was fixed near the right side of the bed, strangely out-of-place. Sakura had drunk her fill of water, but now she was in pain with hunger.

Sasuke took one look at her and seemed to default to Stage One Annoyance setting. "Come."

Sakura had stopped shivering, although her entire body had gone somewhat numb. She took the chance to stretch her limbs, hurrying after her laconic guide. He walked pretty fast. The whitewashed corridors blurred into each other seamlessly until at last, Sasuke preceded her through a set of double doors, pushing them with just enough force for Sakura to clear the entrance without touching them herself.

Her nose told her that this was a cafeteria. Small as it was, it didn't contain a lot of people – not a lot of humans, she noted – but the smell of food was awe-inspiring. When she approached the counter, the food on the trays had a variety of shapes and colors, which was _bizarre. _And there was plenty of it. Sakura spent a moment savoring the experience of being in a position to _choose _what she wanted to eat. Then she glanced at Sasuke, a question in her eyes.

He crossed his arms. _Go ahead._

It took all her restraint to keep from bounding forward.

Everything tasted so good, so sharp, and even had textures that she hadn't known existed. She would have liked to ask one of the other people if they got to eat like this regularly – although they worked for an enemy crew, most of them seemed alright as individuals – but when Sakura and Sasuke sat down at a table, the previous occupants got up and mumbled to each other as they migrated to other seats. Once the novelty of the food and the worst of her hunger pangs wore off, it was actually a little lonely.

The instant she set down her spoon, knowing that she could not take another bite, Sasuke spoke. "What do you know of Uchiha Itachi?"

Sakura could hazard an educated guess as to who this person was. Nevertheless, Ishin – or Itachi – had been her teammate and she'd known him longer. Since Sasuke probably wanted him dead, Sakura hesitated to offer up any information. "Nothing."

Sasuke's black eyes hardened with menace. She sat very still under his gaze. Without warning, his hand shot out, thumb and forefinger pressing down just below either side of her jaw. "Tell me that again."

"Nothing?" She ventured.

"What do you know of a man called Itachi?"

Her eyes flitted over Sasuke's shoulder and his threatening grip. Nobody could be seen in her peripheral vision; no one to call to. Not that any of them would have responded. They were all scared stiff of this man. Well, she'd seen him vulnerable and weak before. Sakura met his dark stare and held it this time. His eyes narrowed as she said, "I don't know anyone called Itachi."

Her heart: thump thump thump.

"Tell me about the three who went with you to meet the Rain delegates."

Ah. If she'd ever suspected that Sasuke and his wandering band weren't members of the Rain, his choice of phrase confirmed it. "They were three of the best. Strong."

His smile was mocking. "Are you one of the best?"

She took the challenge for what it was worth. "Yes."

The smile disappeared. "Then you should fear for your crew when the war begins."

Sakura bit down on her ire and pretended to be nonchalant. _It's already begun. _He didn't know how the Lower-Level crews waged war. "If you underestimate us, it's to your own disadvantage."

"Underestimate _you, _Sakura?" The manner in which Sasuke breathed her name was not at all flattering. "I believe I overestimated."

What would Ino do? Practical and survival-driven, her friend became a terrible enemy when outsiders threatened her squad. In this hopeless scenario, she'd laugh. So Sakura gave a cheerful shrug. "Maybe." Her pulse under the twin points of pressure steadied as they strayed from Sasuke's original question.

"Tell me about the two men who were inside the building with you."

She obliged, even though it became harder to meet his eyes. "Their names are Neji and Ishin…"

"How long has Neji been a part of your crew?"

He was sharp.

"Years and years," she said, wanting to slide her eyes away and hide from the burning intensity in his.

"How long?"

"All his life."

"And Ishin?"

"All his life."

His hand suddenly tightened around Sakura's neck, crushing her windpipe. Her hands flew to her throat. Blunted nails clawed futilely at the constricting hold. "You lie." He released her.

Sakura took a huge, gasping breath that ached all the way to her chest. Her labored cough elicited no sympathy.

"How did he persuade your crew to admit him?"

She closed her watering eyes, a hand on the side of her neck. "He saved a life. Lives."

"Really." Profound skeptism laced his voice. _Good,_ she thought; let him think that Itachi wouldn't do such a thing – that Ishin could not be his brother. _Let everyone stay safe from this brood of vampires._

"Did he ever save yours?"

"No."

"Then why are you so loyal to him?"

She blinked and glanced up through her lashes. Damned if Sasuke didn't look angry. "I've known him longer."

"And I have lived with him for eighteen _years_. How long a time did you have with him, months? You _don't know him_."

"Sorry," she snapped, her own rising anger at having been manhandled surging to match his. "I meant that I know him better than I know _you. _Ishin has never given me cause to treat him as an enemy." Aside from being born in the wrong level, obviously. Even as she defended him, Sakura remembered her own wariness towards the man. Ishin had fascinated her, captivated her interest. He had been a brief window to another world. But never had she considered him a true member of the Leaf.

"Itachi murdered his entire f – ing House," said Sasuke. "Everyone, except for me. Then he fled to the Lower Levels."

"Is it your civic duty to hunt down this Itachi?"

He stared at her like she was a slug on a rusty drainpipe. The next second, his expression congealed into ice. "I've made a mistake," he said coldly, "in speaking to you as if you could understand. We'll continue this in a cell."

"Wait!"

Sasuke gave no indication of hearing.

Sakura leapt to her feet and stood in his way, arms spread out to block him. He walked forward until he towered over her. They were almost nose to nose, and every instinct in Sakura's body screamed for her to back up a few steps – more like a few kilometers – but she remained in place.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said quietly.

"And that means so much to me." The anger in his voice was not what it had been; now it was all fire and lightning. _That_, she could deal with, or at least more so than cold fury, which tended to be concentrated and harnessed and therefore more deadly.

"Sasuke," she said, speaking his name in the same even voice that she ironically used during her stint as an interrogator, "I wouldn't dare to think that it mattered to you, but I mean what I say." Her arms dropped to her sides. "I _do _understand why you have to find Itachi and kill him." Barely conscious of what she was doing, Sakura leaned towards him, tilting her head up so that her lips were a hair's-breadth from his cheek. Was his skin as smooth as his brother's? There was a moment when Sasuke's breath hit a tiny bump. That was the transient instant when Sakura had power over her powerful captor. "But I won't let you hurt the Leaf."

She took a step back. A muscle was working in Sasuke's jaw, but he no longer looked like he wanted to dismember her. A tiny sigh escaped Sakura's lips. "And I'm –"

"Stop apologizing."

She followed him through the double doors, almost trotting to keep up. "Where are we going?"

"Orochimaru wanted to see you." If there was a bug that plagued him day and night, and sucked out all of his energy and vitality, Sakura was sure that Sasuke would have uttered its name in a tone that, compared with the one in which he said _Orochimaru, _would imply a great deal of reverence and tenderness.

"Is he your crew-boss?"

"He's the one who owns the compound," Sasuke said cuttingly. "That doesn't make him the boss of me."

For reasons unknown, Sasuke's irritation had a reassuring effect on Sakura.

After the clinically bright halls, the gym's weak lighting rendered her partially blind. She took a few minutes to adjust. It looked like an empty arena, with dull, dark walls and a floor of concrete overlaid with packed dirt that was a deep, brownish color. There was a viewing box up at the front, just above a sizeable screen. Behind the opaque glass, from that great height, Orochimaru must be looking down at them.

"You may wait outside the door, Sasuke."

The voice came from speakers all around, every subtle nuance transferred into the stagnant air. There was an elemental scent here, partly sweet and vaguely unpleasant as a whole. Orochimaru's voice – who else would have the authority to dismiss Sasuke? – was leathery with age, like old malice fermenting in a cask underground. As Sasuke made to stride past her, Sakura shot him a swift look, not so much imploring him to stay as regretting that he had to leave.

Sasuke held her gaze for a few significant seconds, not really understanding why he was trying so hard to tell her that, if she failed to exit the double doors, he would break them down.

The doors swung shut after him with a harsh bang.

"You have a strange power over Sasuke," Orochimaru remarked. Sakura raised her chin.

"Knowledge is power."

"Indeed." His dry chuckle rebounded and echoed in the vacant gym. "I understand, more than you know, why you are withholding information from our dear boy."

She saw nothing behind the shadowed glass, not even a hint of movement. _Do you?_

"I have allowed him to keep you for a period of time. He is responsible for feeding and caring for you. He will not be granted any extra sets of clothing or gear; these, he may procure from others. But you will still be dining on my food. That is something you can earn, either in the battle sector or in Kabuto's lab. Which do you prefer?"

_Lab_, she thought at once, then ground to a halt. Just because she'd be in a lab didn't mean she would be an assistant. She could be the rat. "How long do I have to decide?"

The smile in Orochimaru's voice chilled her all the way to her abdomen. It was the kind of sound that would make a younger Sakura's toes curl. "I'll grant you another day to think it over. You must be tired. I would advise you," he added with relish, "to make sure dear Sasuke has eaten enough to stave off hunger pangs in the night."

Sakura centered all her focus on carrying herself with dignity.

"You are free to go. Until next time, Sakura."

Regardless of what Sasuke had told her and how much she despised the man, it was still protocol to treat a crew-boss with respect. Sakura bowed and tried not to sprint for the doors.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

In terms of controlling his face, Sakura thought that Sasuke could use a little practice on his eyes. Not that the brief flash of alarm behind those black irises didn't warm her a bit. Unexpected gratitude for the tiny flicker of concern in his stare prompted her to reassure him at once. "Orochimaru didn't do anything. He just wanted me to tell you that you won't receive additional supplies for me."

He pushed away from the wall and started down the corridor, trusting her to tail him. "What else?"

Because she was finding it difficult to talk and keep up at the same time, she gave him a concise answer: "Battle sector or laboratory."

"Kabuto will keep you alive. Tell Orochimaru you choose the lab."

Why, Sakura groused, it wasn't for Sasuke to _decide _for her! "What if I don't want to live as someone's experimental creature?"

The jab was too obvious for Sasuke to miss it. He slanted her a contemptuous glance. "The important thing is for you to live."

"For you," she flared. "I'd rather keep my self-respect. You just want information. What if I told you everything you wanted to hear, or maybe that I _don't _know anything? You wouldn't care less if I died in battle the next day."

"For you to enter the battle sector is basically a death sentence," he said with insulting bluntness. "They would slaughter you. And what does it matter to you if I would rather you stayed alive for my own interests? As long as the end result converges with your well-being that shouldn't be important."

"It's the difference between being cared for and being used," snapped Sakura, made unreasonable by her annoyance at the punishing pace he maintained. "Maybe you've never considered anyone or anything above yourself."

"You don't know me at all." His voice had become low and dangerous; something about her words had hit a nerve. "Save your speculations for someone who's interested."

"Hm. I bet Kabuto would be interested."

Before she had time to react, Sasuke had spun around and shoved her against the wall. Her hip slammed into the top of a handrail that sloped down along a flight of stairs. The sharp pain blossomed outwards from the bone. She closed her eyes, letting it pass out of her. But Sasuke's hand didn't loosen.

"Do you _want _me to kill you?" His harsh whisper brushed the top of her bowed head.

"That would have a kind of poetic justice, wouldn't it?" Sakura murmured. Little tears had sprung to the corners of her eyes. The situation was hopeless. While she usually had a tendency to regret past choices, Sakura found that she almost didn't care if Sasuke killed her.

"You can be the selfless one," he said derisively, "and stay alive."

When he let go, Sakura grabbed the rail for support. Every trace of worry for her had bled out of Sasuke's black eyes. Turning her back on him, she walked down the stairs with her teeth clenched together. _Sakura, you are a mess._

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Sasuke had expected her to hesitate within five minutes and wait for him to take the lead again, but she had apparently learned her way around the white-walled maze much faster than he had. This evidence of Sakura's intellectual prowess only irked him. Without commenting on the accomplishment, he pressed his palm against the room door. Everything was as he had left it: the desk, the chair, the single bed.

The sparseness of furniture in the room had never bothered him before.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --


End file.
